Doggy Adventures

We've got a new puppy! He's a beagle husky mix, and I'm pretty sure at this point the name Rookie is going to stick. He's a precious little goober with a ton of personality. He loves my German Shepherd, but I'm not sure how Gunner feels about him yet. It'll take some gettting used to for him. Right now he prefers to keep his distance but I'm sure once Pup starts to grow a little more things will be fine. We'll see.

I just confiscated a sock from him about ten minutes ago. My dirty clothes basket is now sitting on the floor of my closet so he can't get to any of my clothes (which are mostly my work clothes because I haven't done laundry yet.) I'm not about to let the little bugger gnaw a hole in one of my work shirts. We just got some new ones and if those get jacked up then I'm up shit's creek.

Thankfully, we've got plenty of dog toys for Rookie to already play with. Those, I think, will help with the puppy teeth and general puppy chewiness. Does anyone have any tips for keeping him from trying to chew on fingers? And toes? Because he really freaking likes my toes.

Anyways. In other doggy related news, we have a retired state police K-9 that stays where I work (I work in the county jail) unless one of our staff members decides to take him home. He's our drug dog that we occasionally have to bring out for searches and such. Most of the time, though, he stays up in our control room and while he is incredibly well trained and well tempered, he's also spoiled absolutely rotten. He's one of us (and if we have an inmate who tries to hurt him. It's the same charge that they get if someone tries to harm us, which carries a 3-5 year setence. No bullshit.) and we love him to death.

On my shift, we don't let him out by himself because he's a black lab and he's insanely hard to see in the dark. While he's got a collar and leash that's used for if our boss takes him to a school for a demonstration, or if someone takes him home for the weekend or something, when we just let him out if the building to go to the bathroom, he's not leashed. He never goes too far, and always comes running back when you call for him.

Well, someone let him out the other morning a little while after we changed shifts (I'm night shift, work 7pm to 7am) and no one let him back in. Somehow, no one happened to notice the dog was gone.

The whole day. No one noticed.

We come on shift at 7pm. I have first shift watching cameras and operating doors in the control room. I notice he isn't there, but I just figure that someone had taken him home. No big deal, really.

Two and a half hours later, I switch out control room duty with someone else. I go and do my first hall check. Come back, sit down at the booking desk where we typically spend most of our time when we're not doing anything else, and there's a phone call. We answer tons of calls a night.

But this call is from one of our people on the shift we just relieved. I answer it and immediately "is Otto there? It just hit me that I didn't see him before I left "

D is one of a couple of our staff members who will take our dog home with him. There's a hilarious story about D attempting to take Otto home for the weekend and getting no more than up the street to the gas station we typically order food from (because it's the only flipping place in this town open past midnight) before he had to turn around and bring him back. Why? D is a hunter. His hunting boots had 'Doe in heat' on them, which for anyone who doesn't know, attracts bucks. Needless to say D was very surprised when Otto suddenly started breathing real heavy and was humping air.

Lmao.

Anyways, we talk for a minute and he says he'll make some calls and see if someone took him home.

I immediately jumped up to go find our deputy who is over both night shifts. I tell her about this, and I can immediately tell by the look on her face and the way she jumps up from what she's working on that as far as she knows, no one took Otto home with them.

We look everywhere in the building. Upstairs, downstairs, in the cells, the front office, the kitchen, the breakroom, the laundry room.

We walked the perimeter of the building. Nothing. My coworker and I walked from the building (which is at the end of a long ass driveway so it's more secluded) all the way to the road and back in the dark looking for him. We tracked him on our cameras for as long as we could. We had one of our city police officers and deputy sheriff's out looking for him.

Thankfully, though, come morning the word got around that our K-9 was missing. Someone near the highway up from the jail had called the dog warden to come and pick him up.

By the time I came to pick up my check at 9am, he was back home and safe and sound. Scared the absolute shit out of us though. I know D didn't get any sleep that night.

Otto was very tired and sore today, and after a nice warm bath and brushing session, he passed out in the floor of our booking area on a blanket, content as could be.

Anways, long story short, our K-9 spent the night in doggy jail while we were all worried to death about him. Made for a seriously LONG shift that night.

Speaking of work and long shifts, I've got the next couple days off, so hopefully I'll get some writing done! A new chapter of Guerra should be up soon!

-Breanna
January 30th, 2020 at 10:46am