How Stanley Became Molly

A lot of years ago we were shopping one day in our nearby town and I was suffering from a very painful knee and we were walking on a rather crowded footpath, (I was hobbling), when suddenly through the crowd ran a miniature Jack Russell. I think that it had the shortest legs of any dog I had seen to that day and it was complete with a same length stubby tail to match. Believe it or not this little cute dog wore a bright red "studded" collar ! Being dog lovers ourselves with two of our own at home we instantly "noticed" this dear little dog. I have never been a fan of Jack Russell's but this was the cutest little dog. Anyway my wife calls out to me that it must be lost and takes off after the little dog in the crowd. There were cars whizzing past and just as a 26 wheel prime mover stopped at the nearby traffic lights the little dog races out onto the road and runs through under the bogie's of this monster truck. My wife races across and manages to get the little fellow to change direction and back on to the footpath went the dog and continued to run through the crowd once again. I was left behind to hobble along as fast as I could and when I arrived at the next corner here is my wife standing on a traffic island in the centre of all the traffic clutching the little dog in her arms. Well we took the small dog to the local council office where we were asked to see the pound officer. We waited with several other people there also on council business and shortly a man in a uniform arrived and announced that he was the dog pound operator. Still clutching the small dog my wife explained where and how we had found the dog. The pound officer pulled out some paperwork and proceeded to obtain all our details and where the dog was found etc. etc. noting it all as he went. Finally when the paperwork was complete he held his arms out over the counter and said to my wife, "I will take the dog then". Well gee my wife spins around, jumps back, hugs the dog and calls out, "Your not getting her" ! (By this stage we had established that it was a little girl). Well the pound officer was a little taken back and rather red faced and embarrassed in front of the other customers. He then said, "Well I guess you can keep the dog and we will refer to you any enquiries we may get". We left for home with me grinning at the look on the pound officers face. "Gee you sure told him in no uncertain manner that he was not getting the dog" I laughed to my wife. For the next couple of weeks we placed several adverts in our local newspaper telling about the "found" dog and we tried hard to locate her owner. My wife also named her Molly and removed the studded red collar which seemed so out of place on such a sweet little girl. We really were getting to like little Molly, she had a lovely little nature and we all adored her. We had a small mini bike on which we used to give our grandchildren rides, neither of our other two dogs were very fond of the mini bike . They would sit on it and ride on it but were not very thrilled about it and rather nervous. We noticed that every time we started the mini bike Molly would get all excited and she loved it, if we sat her on the petrol tank she would put her stumpy little feet up on the handlebars and she loved tearing along with the wind in her face. I told my wife, this dog knows and has ridden motorbikes before ! One day, some time later, my wife received a phone call from a lady enquiring if we still had the little Jack Russell that we had found. My wife arranged for the lady to call and look at Molly and see if it was their lost dog. The lady arrived and inspected Molly and she and my wife sat and had a cup of tea while Molly sat on my wife's knee. My wife explained all about Molly and the fun that we all had with her since we had found her. Finally the lady explained that Molly was definitely their dog, it actually belonged to her teenage son, the dogs name was "Stanley" !!!!! She then went on to explain that her son did not look after "Stanley" very well, the dog was frequently lost and generally a vagrant around the town hanging around the schools, (which would explain why Molly loved children), and sooner or later was going to be run over by a car. The lady then said to my wife. "I would like you to keep Stanley yourself, I will return home and tell my son that this was not his Stanley." The lady could also see how much my wife loved the little dog and how she had settled in to our dog loving home. The lady left then and we never saw her again. Years later we were at a farm field day, Molly was with us and we had sat down to have a cuppa and this young fellow walked past staring at Molly. He then walked past once again still staring. He never did approach us but I often wonder if he was the previous teenage owner whom his mother had spoken of. Well little, tough, motorbike riding Stanley, complete with studded collar, finally transformed into a dear sweet little girl called Molly. She still enjoyed her occasional mini bike ride and every now and then I would call her "Stanley" ! and she would answer by wagging her little stumpy tail. Molly has long gone to Doggy heaven now but we had many years of fun with her and will never forget her and how she just fitted straight in with our other two little dogs and ourselves.