An (unshaggy) dog story
When David and Daisy and I were on our way home this afternoon from Rehavia, our irresistible doggie attracted a lovely female white puppy with black spots who started by sniffing at the normal place and then decided this was the playmate for her - now. Since this part of Rehov Usshishkin is busy and the pavements narrow, it was not a good idea for them to play there: apart from the fact that David was desperate to get home because he was shlepping a not-light elderly printer to be passed on to one of his creative-writing group students.
We were just outside a courier business, where three men were sitting outside on a bench, so I asked whose dog it was. Typically, they were very unhelpful. I picked the puppy up and put her on the bench (by this time the men had stalked off), where she suddenly seemed very scared. She had a collar but no “dog tag” (in both senses), as we have done for Daisy, with her name in English and Hebrew and “her” mobile phone number on the other side. So what do we do?
David suggested putting her in the garden of the house opposite, which I did, not managing to close the gate properly. After we got home, David immediately went out shopping. I settled myself down to carry on reading a student’s thesis, and then decided to go to town to change a dollar cheque because finally the shekel is weakening so I’ll get more shekels. (If anyone can explain to me how we can fight a war and have our local currency strengthen, I’ll be grateful….)
Anyway, Daisy decided that she absolutely had to go out again, so I said fine, I’ll take you with me.
The moment we came out of the house, a youngish man asked me if I’d seen a dog – his had gone missing. Small, I said, a puppy? White? Yes, yes. With black spots? Yes! I told him where I’d left her, but he looked a bit unclear, so I said, fine, we’ll walk with you. When we got to the garden, the gate was wide open, and my heart fell into my boots. No signs of puppy.
Daisy insisted on going upstairs inside the building. I had a faint hope that the puppy might be hiding inside, but no luck. By the time we emerged, there was no sign of the owner. However, I’d taken the trouble to ask him his name, so I continued up the street calling his name. He came back looking crestfallen – no puppy. We all went into the house next door and walked round in the garden, but again no joy.
I insisted that he give me his mobile phone number, and gave him mine, in case one of us found her. And then suddenly, behind him, outside the gate, I saw something white, with a tail. “There,” I said – “there’s a doggie there. Is that her?” He turned round and saw her, and in a very matter-of-fact fashion said, “Michelle!” (a very unusual name for a dog in Israel).
We all emerged into the street and the puppy instantly started playing with Daisy again, just as she had an hour earlier… She was so oblivious of the cars, and the owner didn’t have a lead with him, that I begged him to pick her up. I couldn’t bear the thought that moments after I had managed to reunite dog and owner, something awful might happen to her.
The owner, Micha, said that he’d not long been back from Lebanon: gesturing at his short hair, he said, “I went there with a pony tail, and this is how I came back.”
So in the puppy’s short life - she's four months old - she’d been separated from her owner for over a month. But she was one of the lucky ones: his parents looked after her while he was in the army. Many of the dogs who were abandoned by their owners when they fled the North during the shelling have not been reclaimed and are in danger of being put down.
Israelis are not on the whole a dog-friendly population….
