An Adventure for Bartley

Yesterday as we were driving to Mom's house, there were two large dogs on the highway not really caring or moving out of the way when cars drove past.  One was a bloodhound, and the other was a very old shaggy looking black lab mix.

I freaked and pulled over worrying that they would get hit.  Ben ran up to see if they would come to him or if they had collars on.  The bloodhound took off, but the lab came over to him.  Low and behold he did have a collar on, but when Ben called the number it was disconnected.  Ben ran up to the farm house nearby which was the direction the bloodhound took off in and I turned the car around and drove up there. Turns out that farmhouse had long been abandoned, so we tried a different approach.

We called the other number on his tag which took us to animal control for Lancaster county.  They gave us the information of whose dog it was and we found out his name was Bartley.  We were out of their jurisdiction to make a pick up so they patched Ben through to the Sheriff's office.

Forty minutes later a deputy came out, took Ben's information, and said he was going to take him to the Humane Society.  We asked that we be called if they could not find the owner, because neither one of us would be able to live with ourselves knowing this dog would be put to sleep if he didn't get adopted.  We gave the deputy the information of the owner that animal control gave us and he said he would try to take him home before going to the Humane Society.  Hours later he called back and said he had taken Bartley back to his home!

Photo for January 8th

(taken that day)

What an absolute sweetheart!  (Bartley, not Ben, ok both of them really)  His front two legs had some lacerations and he was pretty well caked in mud, we thought he had been lost for quite awhile.  We are glad he made it home (about 5 miles away from where we found him) and hope that him and his bloodhound friend stay home and stay off the highway!