Never a Dull Moment

Doc always tells me that one of the many things that she loves about her job is that she has never had one boring day at work. You would think that after all these years of doing her job that she would have seen and heard everything, but apparently not, because last Friday we both experienced something that was not part of a regular workday.

At about 7am we walked over to the medical building to greet a new patient that had been transferred to our caseload. While we were waiting, Doc took me into the waiting room to cheer up the patients that were waiting for their appointments. The special duty Columbus police officer, Sargeant Rob happened to walk in, and Doc started chatting with him while I was engaged with the patients. Everything was going normally until a patient walked through the doorway and was holding something wrapped in a blanket. No one paid much attention until he announced, “Look how cute this is!”  Doc looked up and from across the room she thought he was holding a Chihuahua puppy. Sargeant Rob must have thought the same thing as he told him he couldn’t have that puppy in the building. Well, that was when things got interesting.

“It’s not a puppy.” The patient said and pulled back the blanket to reveal a baby racoon. Well, that got everyone’s attention. I had been too busy to notice and was surprised at how quickly Doc took me to another area of the building while Sergeant Rob addressed the racoon situation. Luckily, I was preoccupied, or I would have drug Doc across the room to investigate. I have yet to encounter a racoon in my young life and would have liked to meet the poor little orphan. I just might have convinced Doc to take it home with us and we could be raised together as siblings. When I later told Doc about my idea, she put the kibosh on that quickly. She told me if someone finds an abandoned baby wild animal and they are sure that the mother abandoned it, they can take it to the nearest wildlife center. There they will raise it and put it back out in the wild where it will be happiest.

Even though I tried to convince Doc otherwise by reminding her that I came from wild wolf ancestry and that she has domesticated me to live in the house, all she said was “Nice try Walter, you wouldn’t last a day in the wild.” I guess she has a point.

So, I hope the baby raccoon is ok, and I will have Doc ask Sargeant Rob what happened after we left when he is on duty again this Friday.