Who’s Boss?

The early morning bandit.

6am in the morning, I’m sitting on the balcony with my coffee as per usual. The cup is cooling quickly due to the breeze, so I start gulping. I see a large black dog on the street out the front. With a casual “trot” he passes by the house. No owner in sight. You know what comes next don’t you?

I hurriedly put my coffee on the table, shoes on, and I’m down the stairs in a flash in trackie dacks and with bed hair to begin the chase.

Down the street, around the corner, down another street and around another corner. He seemed spooked by the barking dogs in the neighbourhood but finally he stopped and let me approach. He rolled over onto his back, and with legs in the air he asked me for a belly rub. Awww, instantly we were friends!

“Follow me home buddy?” I said. His eyes were deep and loyal and after the extended tickle I could tell I’d won him over. Up he got to see what else I had to offer.

Around the corner and down the street and back to my house we went. He lapped up lots of water and ate my cat Angel’s least favourite food. He even had seconds. This boy was very happy and he had me wrapped around his elderly fingers/paws.

I finally found a use for my cat’s least favourite flavour of food.

The next half hour involved making his bed in the shade, more food, more water, more playing, and a very vocal and unhappy cat watching on from inside the house.

I contacted various animal rescue groups, Unfortunately there was no owner contact details on the dog’s collar but the registration disc helped the authorities to locate the owner. The dog was clearly well-behaved and loved so I held hope he would be returned to where he belonged.

I knew I was running late for work and I suddenly thought to myself, who’s in charge here? Me or this dog?! I’d been hood-winked by a hound. No longer was I concentrating on making an early start back at the office. Instead I’d been sucked into those puppy eyes and all my attention was on making him safe and comfortable.

An hour or so later I had a call from the owner. With sincere apologies, they were arranging for their pet dog to be collected from our yard. They told me his name was “Boss”.

Boss!

Ha, I’m not surprised.

Man or beast. Who’s boss in my case? I’ll give you one guess…