I thought of a great title for this post and promptly forgot it.

Earlier today I rescued a tiny dog. (Before anyone who might be married to me panics, my use of the word 'rescued' here means 'reunited with her human'.)

I was walking to the post office to mail my mother's birthday gift (her birthday is today and I bought the gift weeks ago which just shows you how organized I've been lately) and I saw a teensy white dog on the grass in front of an apartment building. I bent down to pet her and noticed there were no humans in the immediate vacinity. I picked her up and determined she had no collar, which kind of worried me.

I picked her up! Now I can't just leave her! I NOTICED SHE WAS ALONE AND AM NOW RESPONSIBLE FOR HER! CRAP!

There was a guy playing with his kid in the courtyard of the building, and the gate was ajar, so I thought maybe she was theirs. I yelled in but they said no. So I began stopping people walking by, asking if they knew the dog. That...was a nice way to meet old Korean ladies, but didn't exactly help. Eventually a teenage girl came out on the balcony of one of the apartments in the building where I'd found the dog, and I asked her. (Lest anyone wonder why I hadn't explored further, she was a tiny, old little dog and didn't seem likely to have wandered very far.) The girl got her mother who thought the dog belonged to a neighbor, and they came down to get the dog. The neighbor in question materialized, they explained that the crazy white girl was holding her dog on the sidewalk, and she came to take her back.

She told me, in Spanish, that the gate must have been opened.

I told her, in English, that the dog needs a collar.

She said "Thank you."

I said, "De nada."

The end.

Well, not quite. I have to editorialize a bit.

There are a lot of tiny dogs in Los Angeles. It's tiny dog central. I think this is because most landlords don't allow pets, and the ones who do often have a weight limit. Usually 20 pounds. So it's a purse dog or nothing. This dog can't have weighed ten pounds. She was very pretty but not at all in a showy way. She was calm and sweet and liked being held. She got nervous after a while when a dog somewhere started yapping, and clung to my arm, but she never barked or squirmed, just sort of sat there. Very sweet girl. As much as I do not want a small dog, I didn't really want to give her back to her person, who seemed oblivious to the fact that the gate had a six inch gap underneath it when closed and her bitty dog could escape any time and DIDN'T HAVE A COLLAR, damn it.