Just before the first snow hit last year, had a dog run across a 4 lane busy road on my way biking home one day, owner didn't have the leash on (stupid considering the traffic). Dog bolts right into the road. I start hollering and wave my arms, pull my bike across the lanes and directly in front of a ton of cars going fast enough to do some harm. Someone on the other side of the road did the same for the other direction.
Dog ran right by me ignoring the owner, you could see the "YAH AWESOME RUN RUN RUN RUN RUN YAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYA" in it's eyes. Pup had no idea how close it was to getting smackered.
Anyhoo, owner was on the opposite side of the road, dog eventually ran back oblivious of all the honking cars, other person blocking traffic looked like she had a few unhappy words for the person in question. I just watched long enough to watch the leash go on.
I had a dog with no tags come running into my backyard a month before we got our current dog. It ran all over my backyard and I chased it down a few houses away. Dog chilled out while I checked with my neighbors to see if it was theirs, but it wasn't. I brought it to my house and fed it and gave it some water, then took it out for a walk to see if we could find the owners. Eventually, the owners found me and thanked me for holding onto their dog.
I say do what you can to find the owner and if no response, you take care of an abandoned dog.
Damn straight.
We ended up with a new kitten along these same lines. Mother in law's building has a garage in the back, back in the fall finds a young-ish cat trying to get some shelter there. So she puts down some food and water, some blankets in a box. Little thing set up shop fine enough.
But when it started hitting -20C, she scooped it up and plopped it into a vacant apartment so it wouldn't freeze to death. We come visit and "oh hi here's a cat, take it home, the apartment is getting rented out and the cat has nowhere to go"(couldn't take it herself, her dog would likely kill it trying to play with it, poor dumb happy thing doesn't know it's own strength).
So now we have another cat. I figured by the size of her skull and how light she was, maybe 2 years old. The vet figured closer to 1 year old, had her scanned and no chip so no owner to track down in theory. So this poor thing, alone was surviving for months on it's own in the fall, no idea what happened to it's mom or litter was surviving on it's wits likely before it's first birthday.
Whenever she got up on the window sill near the balcony door or the cat-door we have in the window she sniffs the cold air a bit then runs away. Poor thing must have been just freezing most nights until she got scooped up. Now she curls up on the couch with me and licks my face.
Still wonder what happened to her littermates.
Only started going out on the balcony this last week after it started getting back to only negative single digits.
