Butler, a Boston Terrier

This story took place in an area that is lucky to have a Lost Dog Registry with volunteers and a telephone number to call. That’s how this dog was found. They place ads in the paper so people will know they exist. Now, you can see that this dog's dad is crazy about the dog, yet he did stupid things like leave his dog unattended for 30 minutes and without a tag, and the dog is a digger . . . A lot of people would pass judgment that he's too irresponsible to care for a dog. I say don't spoil it, 'cause he's not alone. Just enjoy the story.


Good deed brings curious pup back to rightful owner--
By Jeffrey Spivak
10/1/99

KANSAS CITY, MO _ The sound out of Clayton Briscoe's mouth ascended from the pit of his soul. It was a guttural yell, one born of desperation and terror, like from a mother watching her toddler running into the street.

"Buuuutttt-lerrrr," Briscoe hollered out. It was 4 am on a Thursday in late August. Briscoe was frantically jogging, walking, darting through his north Overland Park, Kan., neighborhood, up the streets, across driveways, through back yards. He was bellowing at the top of his lungs, waking up the neighbors and bawling his eyes out.

His dog, a little Boston terrier, the love of his life, was lost.

"Butler!" he shrieked. "Where's my puppy?"

He'd had that short-haired dog just three years. Got it when he got married. His grandmother, uncle and aunt all had Boston terriers. So Briscoe bought one, too. It was black with white patches around the collar and on one paw. Its coat looked like a tuxedo, thus the name "Butler."

Briscoe took that dog everywhere, to stores, to parks, to friends' houses, even on vacations. He taught that dog to howl when he played the flute. He coached that dog to crunch a racquetball in its mouth and shoot it out. Now Briscoe was going through a divorce. That dog was his only child, his boy.

"He's the only thing I've got," Briscoe said. Now Butler was gone.

"Buuuutttt-lerrrr."

This night had been one of the few times when Briscoe didn't take the dog with him. He had gotten home to his duplex at 3 a.m., then let Butler out into the fenced- in back yard. A half-hour later, Briscoe wondered why Butler hadn't come back in. He went out to check. Butler wasn't around. And there was a hole dug under the wood fence.

It was more than the 26-year-old could handle. He broke down in tears and burst out his door in the 7700 block of Kessler Street.

The search continued for two hours. Briscoe caught an hour's sleep, then was out again at 8 am, knocking on doors. No luck. He came back in and called animal shelters, wondering what to do.

One suggested he notify the Lost Dog Registry.

He dialed the number. It rang into a small office in the Waldo section of Kansas City.

Janice Martin unlocked the office door and sat at the lone desk. A guide to America's dogs hung on one wall. A linen quilt of pooches hung on another. A doggie- faced mug held her coffee.

She had started the Registry, a lost-and-found dog clearinghouse, 28 years ago. Now she was in her 60s and still volunteering hours every day. This summer had been the busiest she could remember. This day, Aug 19, was typical. There were more than two dozen messages on the answering machine.

Martin turned on the playback. A chocolate-colored Labrador had jumped a fence. A golden retriever had turned up in someone's yard. A Boston terrier had run away. On and on it went.

After all these years, she had become almost numb to grief. She started making calls, obtaining more specific information on the dogs for index cards the Registry kept. She reached Briscoe that morning.

Before long, Martin heard him crying into the phone, sobbing and talking at the same time, blubbering so much that she couldn't make out what he was saying.

"I was about to cry with him," she said. "I've never had a gentleman so undone."

The Registry had a pretty good track record, even when a dog didn't have a tag, like Butler. Nearly half the calls resulted in owners being reunited with their pets. Sometimes the dog made its own way home. And sometimes the Registry matched one of its "found" cards with a "lost" card.

Typically, all this happened within the first day of a dog being lost. After the first day, Martin knew the odds of recovering a lost pet dropped precipitously.

By the end of Thursday, no one reported finding a pooch like Butler. No one called Friday, or over the weekend, or the beginning of the next week. Then that Thursday, another of the Registry's volunteers took a call about a Boston terrier found in Johnson County. It was from a woman named Wanda Brizendine. Brizendine had been sitting in her ranch house in the 8600 block of Stearns Street when she heard the two preschool-aged children next door yell, "Mom, look what we found."

A dog had wandered into their yard. The children asked their mom if they could keep him. The family had just gotten rid of two boxers. The mother didn't want any more dogs. She told her children "no." So the children carried the dog to 68-year- old Brizendine.

"That doggie needs a home, you can tell," Brizendine told them. "He's nervous."

She should know. She was, by her own account, "a dog person." She once had three dogs in the house. She still had two, one of which she found off the street. No one claimed it, so she kept it.

Actually, it's not uncommon for people to keep the dogs they find. The Lost Dog Registry had a few cases a year in which dog-finders refused to give up what they found. Sometimes, the owner and finder ended up in court. And Briscoe's uncle told the story of losing his terrier once and a week later seeing someone walking his dog.

The thought of keeping this new dog, this Boston terrier, crossed Brizendine's mind, too. It was so well-groomed, so well-behaved. "I wouldn't mind having one of these," she said. And if not her, her 23-year-old grandson. He heard about what she found and called her, wanting it.

Brizendine debated what to do. She had the dog two nights now. She had to at least try to find the owner. That's what she would want with one of her pets. She remembered seeing something about the Lost Dog Registry in the newspaper. She called.

Registry volunteer Tessa Calegari jotted down Brizendine's description of the Boston terrier, then thumbed through the index cards looking for a match. There seemed to be one. She called Briscoe and left a message for him to call Brizendine. By the time Briscoe got that message at home, he was in tears. He had given up hope of ever seeing Butler again. Just that afternoon, he had received a call from one of the animal shelters he originally contacted. It had a dog that fit Butler's description. After work, he raced there, but was told a woman had just picked up the dog.

"You've got to be kidding me!" Briscoe roared. "She's got my dog!" He wanted to hunt her down. The shelter wouldn't tell him where she lived. "I was a mess," he said.

Then there was the message to call Brizendine. He called. She quizzed him about the dog.

"What did the tail look like?"

"It looks broken."

"That's him," Brizendine said.

Briscoe immediately drove 16 blocks to Brizendine's. She sat in the front yard holding the Boston terrier in her lap. Briscoe jumped out of his car. The terrier jumped up and ran to him. Briscoe scooped up his dog, his Butler.

"There's my baby, did you miss your daddy?" he cooed.

It was one of those little-known instances of strangers helping strangers, that sometimes fortuitous circle of circumstances when goodness and generosity conquers grief.

Briscoe offered to pay Brizendine. "You've got to be kidding," Brizendine replied. "This made my heart feel good."

Source: http://www.animalworldnetwork.com/bgooddeedbri.html