I am not one of those people who believes everything happens for a reason. I know there is not an intricate plan wherein every hair on my head is counted. A deity would have to subtract the ones that come out on my comb every morning, and I so hope she is busy seeing to headier stuff
I do not believe that something good comes out of every misfortune.
Sometimes things are just one mishap after another. Sometime things are just one wonderful thing after another. And sometimes, it takes a while to sort out which is which.
Today I was in an exact place at an exact moment. I don’t think it was just random.
I never buy anything at IKEA. I’m never near there at a convenient time. It’s right next to PDX, but for some reason the people who ask me to pick them up or drop them off want me to do it in the wee hours. But today, it was midday, and I’ve been telling everyone all week that I was going to IKEA. So I did.
It was incredibly hot for Portland. Car thermometer read 97º at 1 p.m. Still I followed my usual eccentric routine of parking a distance from the store. I like to walk as much as possible. As I got out of my car, I heard a puppy crying in a car about 30 feet away. A big, black SUV. Totally closed up.
I peeked in through the black windows and could see a small crate in the back confining a lovely boxer puppy about five months old, crying and panting. I looked around and waited a while before dialing 911 and asked for help. It took dispatch a long time to figure out where I was in this huge parking lot. She told me to stay on the line. I told her I might have to break out a window. She said I was certainly protected by our Good Samaritan law if I felt it was necessary. I went to my car for a tire tool.
Took while for the patrol car to find me, and by that time, I had collected an entourage. An old woman in a parking lot standing next to a really nice car with a tire tool over her shoulder tends to attract a crowd.
Interesting that no one offered to do the deed for me. Not the young men. Not the younger women.
Luckily, for all concerned, the officer arrived just in the nick (0r is it knick) of time. I could have done bodily harm to the owner who a tried to look very unconcerned, responding to the page one of my cohort had called in to the store. He said he’d only been 10 minutes. We all knew it had been much longer.
I approached the officer and told him I was the one who had reported the offense. I thanked him for coming and told him I really needed to go because I was so angry I was afraid I might hit the perp. I swear, he smiled just a little as he looked at my weapon and said it was his job and I could go.
Several take-aways from this:
I never buy anything at IKEA.
Animal abuse is everyone’s business.
Do not tick off an old woman with a tire tool.
Sometimes it’s not a coincidence that you are in the right place at the right time.
I did want custody of that puppy.
Wow! That’s crazy! I’m glad the owner was found, but it sounds like a bigger impression might have been made it you had “done the deed.” I hope in this owner’s dressing down and education from the officer the term brachycephalic was mentioned. That boxer pup could probably expire in about half the time as a snout nosed dog, which is why most airlines now refuse to fly them at all.
I’m sure the officer mentioned brachycephalic several times, and I yelled it out the window, brandishing my weapon, as I drove off.
I am not one who would have known what brachycephalic meant but am certainly one who would have known enough to call the owner a son-of-a-bitch as he was laying on his back, staring up at the person who knocked him down. I know, its crude behavior , but sometimes you just have to lift the tire tool a mite higher and swing a bit harder. Good show young lady. Proud of you for many reasons.
Thank you my dear friend. I sooo wished the owner and the officer had arrived five minutes later, after I had broken out his car window. Oregon does not have a :stand your ground” law, but I am very proud to live in a state that has aGood Samaritan Law. Wickedly, I was trying to think which window would have been the most expensive to replace. I would have gone for that one.