A couple weeks ago something interesting happened. It was Friday, April 26th and I was doing outreach at the Last Friday event in downtown Henderson, where there are art vendors, a farmer’s market, live music, food trucks, etc. The event is well attended, and the library has been participating for over a year. We give out library swag, sign people up for library cards, show people how to use our online streaming services, and tell them about upcoming programs. Early in the evening I saw a dog running around across the street, but it looked like someone was stopping their car to pick her up. I assumed it was their pup.
As we were cleaning up at the end of the night, I saw the dog again across the street. I took the bowl that we had candy in and dumped it out and took a couple bottles of water and started pouring one in the bowl as I walked across the street toward her. She saw me and started walking toward me also. I brought her over to my side of the street and had one of my coworkers, Juan, go get our other coworker, Melissa’s husband Jason who is with the Henderson police department.
Jason called animal control as the super sweet female Pitbull sat in my lap. Normally I wouldn’t be alright letting animal control take her, but I knew that she was going to go to the Henderson Animal Shelter, which is no-kill, so I felt like if she was going to find her family this was her best shot, but if they didn’t find her she wouldn’t get put down just because she was a Pitbull. While I was sitting there with her a few of the other vendors asked me how I got her because they had tried to catch her for over an hour. I told them that she just walked up to me because I had water for her, and they were pretty impressed since they had tried to lure her with a hamburger, but she wouldn’t come.
After she was picked up and we got all of our stuff loaded into our cars Juan and I went for a beer at Lovelady Brewing https://www.loveladybrewing.com/home. As we were sitting there my brother called me and told me that he had just got home and as he was getting out of his car this smallish dog jumped into his car. I told him to bring the dog in and I would be home soon. I tell Juan about this and both of us freak out a little because the same thing is happening to both my brother and I at almost the same time.
I get home and take a few pictures of the dog and post them on the Lost Dogs of Las Vegas Facebook group, Nextdoor, and several other places hoping that his owners would see him. The next day I took him to the Nevada SPCA and as we were walking him a couple asked me if I was surrendering him because he is so cute, and they would love to have him. I told them the story of how he showed up at my house the night before and I was just hoping that they could find his owners. I saw him up on their site later that day looking for his family. I had several people on the apps tell me that I should have taken him to the Animal Foundation because that is where Las Vegas Animal Control would have taken him, but I didn’t feel good about it since it is a kill shelter and I’m not willing to take that chance. I looked for the Pitbull online too, but I didn’t see her. Hopefully when they realized she was missing the went to the animal shelter.
While I don’t usually have any issues with animals and can get them to come up to me and usually end up feeling safe with me it’s pretty great when my brother and I are having that same experience at the same time. Apparently, our Newt Scamander powers were in full effect and I couldn’t be more please about it!