My Best Friend's Girl

For the purposes of anonymity, I'm going to call the main character of our story "Rocky." This was not his name, but when he and I met, he was peeing on what I think is some kind of telephone relay junction box in a neighbor's yard a few doors down, which is potentially embarrassing for him. I'd never seen him before, and I'm definitely not the type to go around questioning randos in the neighborhood just because I don't recognize them. That's some real Karen shit, plus the front of my house looks terrible. All of my neighbors have shiny SUVs parked out front. If someone is getting robbed by neighborhood strangers, it almost certainly won't be me.

I think you'll agree with me, though, wandering around yard to yard in the middle of a work day and then stopping to wee on a utility feature is a bit beyond the pale as far as neighborly indifference goes. So I did what one does and I walked up the cul-de-sac a bit, behind him but not purposely stealthily. He just happened not to be paying attention to me. I don't think I startled him too much when I said "Hey there, bud. Are you lost?"

I'd stopped about 15 feet from him as I didn't want to freak him out (I knew he didn't see me coming), but he looked up after finishing his apparently urgent business. He didn't take an immediate defensive or frightened posture, so I reached out a hand. "Can I help you?"

Without hesitation, he loped up to me, stuck his wet nose in my palm and then leaned his body against me. He was breathing pretty heavily, but otherwise seemed fine for being out on a warm-ish Inland Empire June afternoon. He didn't hesitate or flinch when I reached for the tag on his collar. "Rocky," it absolutely did not say. It did have an address and phone number, which was a relief. I've lived in the area for a very long time, so I knew the address was on a street a mile or two north of me and on the wrong side of a very busy, high-speed arterial road. He was panting, as I said, but not like he'd been out for days. He looked to be an older boy, a still pretty sheen-y Golden Retriever coat with a few threads of gray mixed in, and a bit of a neck wattle. My sense was he hadn't come all that far or through that much danger, but I didn't have any other information to go on. But of course now we were best friends, so he was my problem either way.

I called the number from the tag and got some tile company. I left a voicemail, but it seemed off. I texted a picture of our boy to the same number, no response. I asked old Rocky if wanted to come with me and he happily did, with almost no prompting after the initial invitation. I led him into my newly fake-turfed backyard, which he walked straight in to, no looking back. He was immediately fascinated with the lemons that had fallen from the neighbor's invasive lemon tree, but only long enough to pick them up and realize they weren't balls for fetching. I'm not sure if his aversion was to lemons or citrus in general, but I didn't have any grapefruit or yuzu handy to make a scientific determination.

Standing in the backyard kind of at a loss, the next door neighbor (the lateral next door neighbors; lemon tree negelcters are behind) saw me over the fence and initiated a conversation. Typically this is a cue to pretend I have headphones in and duck into the house and hide under a table with the lights off until the sun goes down, but I knew they had a (tiny, yappy) dog, so I asked if they had any dog food. I made sure not to explain the request with any context. Every relationship is a power relationship, that's what Foucault said. Keep them unnerved any way you can.

Rocky was a very sweet boy, very patient. He waited in the backyard, bounded around a little in the older-Golden-Retriever way he might bound. The effort to identify and care for Rocky became collaborative with other neighbors who had food suitable for non-tiny dogs. Rocky couldn't be bothered with the water I offered (even with all the panting) but ate like a half pound of food in all of four seconds when offered.

The larger-dog-food-haver neighbor thought she vaguely recognized the dog, so we did an expedition down the street, first looking for an open side gate or any other obvious evidence of escape. She couldn't remember the exact house it might come from, but one had a car idling in the driveway. Rocky followed us and walked directly up to the car, super casual, but not unlike how he'd walked up to me, so I wasn't sure. The lady got out of the no-longer-idling car, wearing a MAGA hat (the first one I've ever seen in real life!). We asked if she'd been missing a dog. She seemed unsurprised he was out, but yep, that was her boy.

And that was basically it, the whole Rocky story. I can't actually prove any dog neglect or abuse other than this was not the first time he'd liberated himself from the confines of their yard. Also consciously wearing a MAGA hat, it seems, doesn't automatically constitute animal abuse, according to my local department of animal services website. I was surprised to find so specific a thing included in their general information FAQ, but apparently I wasn't the first person to wonder.

I will say in the course of this experience, it brought our little community together to solve a common problem, specifically that one other member of our little community sucks ass. Did I make any new friends or bother to learn any new names of the people I've been living alongside for, in some cases, decades? I refer you to all the references and descriptions above. Draw your own conclusions.