A town called malice

The phone rang, and the man at the other end told me that somebody had tied a dog to the railings outside his flat, and it was cold and wet; that neither the dog warden nor the RSPCA would come out and what should he do? There's no facilities at the surgery for taking in strays so I gave him the number of another dog warden, took his number in case of enquiries and left it at that.

About ten minutes later a very muddy, very tearful client - I'll call her S - came in to give me her mobile number because one of her dogs had been chased during its walk and had run off. She'd been searching for three hours and was afraid the dog had fallen into the swollen river; in fact she'd slipped in herself a couple of times and was soaked. I got on the phone and called back the man with the 'stray' and asked him to describe the dog. As I'd hoped, the description fitted S's missing dog, so I gave her the thumbs-up and took down the man's address. To my surprise her expression turned from joy at learning the dog was located to one of worry. "Oh dear, he's not a nice man" she said. "I hope he hasn't hurt her." And off she went.

Later on I heard more details which make me feel rather angry. It turns out that a couple had found the dog loose, looked at the address on her collar and taken her home. Of course there was nobody there because S was frantically searching the fields and riverbank, so the finders called the vet's main number on the other side of the disc, and were advised that the best thing would be to tie the dog to the banisters in the stairwell outside S's flat (indoors, out of the rain) and she'd be safe there.

I was very shocked to learn that the man who rang me, who'd tried to get the RSPCA and the dog warden to take the dog away, is S's next-door neighbour, and he knew exactly who the dog was and who she belonged to. The spite and malice of his actions physically chilled me.