While cycling along the entrance road to the estate where our offices are this morning, I came upon a golden retriever wandering along on it’s own. For a few seconds I contemplated carrying on, but by the time I finished thinking about that I had already rolled to a stop, and was getting off the bike.
It turned out the dog was called “Polly”, and had a mobile phone number attached to it’s collar. One call later, and I began walking towards an easy place to meet the owner or rather I would have done if they dog trusted me.
Dogs don’t trust strangers. Despite her obvious interest when I put my hand in my pocket for my phone (that must be where biscuits live when she’s out for a walk), she wasn’t going to walk any distance with meshe splayed her feet out, having decided she wasn’t going anywhere. She obviously didn’t plan on meeting Gulliver (I’m 6.4)I swept her up into the air, and carried her the few hundred yards to the place I had agreed to meet her owner.
After standing at the edge of the busy road giving Polly a fuss and making friends, a rather breathless gentleman appeared running alongside the road.”Thankyou! Thankyou!”“That’s fine.”“We’ve got ten acresshe must have slipped through the fence somewhere”(quite why he felt the need to tell me he had ten acres of land was anybody’s guess, but still he seemed nice)I smiled, patted the dog, waved, and started off back down the road towards my (hopefully not stolen) bike.”Hang on a moment”I stopped.”Have this” and he produced a bottle of wine from the inside of his coat. Perhaps it’s common for people with ten acres of land to carry bottles of wine to placate commoners in tricky situations. I wasn’t about to complain.”Thankyou very much!”We both smiled, shook hands, and I trudged off down the road, covered in dog hair. Good deed done for the day.