Mabel: The Puppy We Found in the Street
- ericamargaret5
- Jan 27
- 5 min read
Updated: 3 days ago
Baby Girl Mabel is our "oops baby." We had juuuusssttt reached a point of calmness with the three dogs that we already owned and I was looking forward to getting back into the routine of a normal person. (Maybe find a dogsitter? Maybe take a weekend trip? Maybe take a nap once in awhile? Maybe a haircut???) We had no intentions of getting a fourth, but the Dog Distribution System had other plans.
On our typical 5:30 am pre-work walk, I saw what I thought was fox running across one of the busier back roads in the neighborhood. We almost always see foxes running around so I said something along the lines of "Oh look, a fox," and my husband said "That's not a fox. That's a puppy." I have no idea how he could have possibly discerned this IN THE DARK and a BLOCK AWAY from the street she was running around in, but he knew. He passed Cheeze over to me (whom he was walking that morning) and ran over to the intersection to see if he could get another look. In the glow of the street light, as cars were driving by and trying to do their morning commute, Mabel was running all over the street dodging cars and alternating between being afraid of Chris and really really really really really wanting the snack in his hand. I was holding my breath on the other corner and hanging on to the other three dogs.
After a spate of cars went by and it was quiet for a second, Chris sat down on a curb and she finally approached to get some food. He was able to scoop her up and get her away out of the road. Phew. Phew. Phew.
Me, Cheeze, Gussie, and Porter had been waiting on the other side of the street trying to be quiet and not to spook the pup, and when Chris finally caught her I remember thinking "Oh. Thank God. Someone is going to be so thankful that we found their puppy!!!! I bet they are driving around right now looking for her and they'll be so excited that we found her!!!!" I remember thinking that we would not get to the end of the block before one of the many cars that passed us in the morning would stop to ask if we had seen a puppy.... and then we would triumphantly be like "We found your puppy!!!"
Instead, we walked a half mile home, Chris carrying the puppy, and me walking the other three, who were also trying to sniff the pile of smelly fur in Chris's arms. We made it all the way home with her; not one car stopping to ask about a lost puppy.
Still confused, we figured someone had to be looking for her. I've never in my life come across a lost puppy, let alone in the middle of the 'burbs. Stray kittens? Yes. Stray cats? Yes. Stray puppies? No.
We brought her inside and put her in a bathroom away from the other dogs and gave her some food and water that she gobbled down. She was so so so so hungry and so so so so thirsty and so so so smelly and so skinny. She reeked of piss and was covered in cuts. She had no collar or identifying information. (We put the pink collar on her when she got to the house.) My principal, whom I was supposed to be meeting with that morning for my evaluation, let me reschedule it to a later date when I texted her a picture of my current puppy problem.
We called up a friend who we knew was home that day and asked him to come over. We cleaned the puppy up, gave her food and water, put her in one of the many puppy playpens we had from Cheese and Gussie. We asked our friend to hang out with her and take her out every 1/2 hour or so to try and go potty. Our friend spent the day on Facebook looking through Lost Dog posts. We were sure we would find the owner by evening time.
At a normal person hour (not teacher hours), I also texted my neighborhood friends to see if anyone was looking for a lost dog. I also had them post about the lost puppy on NextDoor and Facebook since I don't have accounts for those apps. Again, I was pretty sure this would do it if our friend's Facebook searching didn't.
That night, with no responses from social media, I drove her to the vet to see if she had a microchip. No microchip.
Two days later, when we still had not heard anything, I reported her to the Fairfax County Shelter, who said that no one was looking for a dog of that description and also that they were at capacity. Could we watch her for 30 days? At the end of 30 days, we could keep her or the county would put her up for adoption.
At this point, I took her to the vet to get checked out because 30 days was a long time to keep all of the dogs separated. The vet checked for another microchip (there wasn't one), and told us that she was around 11 weeks old because her "chipmunk" teeth hadn't come in. yet. Yikes! We thought she was 4 or 5 months. She was going to be a big girl!
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Obviously, you know what happened next. Every time I looked at my husband, he was cuddling with the puppy, playing with the puppy, sleeping with the puppy, petting the puppy... He wasn't going to admit it, but I didn't think he wanted to part with the puppy. He will of course blame me for this whole 4-dog situation and say that I wanted to keep the puppy, but he's a damn liar.
The truth of the matter was that I didn't have the heart to give her up. She seemed to drop from the sky at an exact moment. If we had been walking 3 minutes later or 3 minutes earlier, we wouldn't have seen her. Why then? I am not very woo woo but it felt like The Universe had decided there was some reason she should be with us and I wasn't about to mess with the universe.
Once the 30 days was up, no one had claimed her. Against all logic, we decided to keep the puppy and name her Mabel. The pack didn't seem to mind her and she didn't seem to mind us and really, what was one more dog????? A LOT, IT TURNS OUT, but that's a story for another post.
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