Holy fucking christ, am I the patron saint of lost/abandoned animals?

So I've been out on my deck several times tonight. This last time, I hear a chain dragging and a dog is barking at me. There's some sort of pit-mix padlocked on a very short chain to my neoghbor's back stair rails. That dog wasn't there before. My neighbor is a doglover with a very pampered rottie named Baby. This is not her AT ALL. This dog is visibly thin from my deck.

I go down, she's friendly. Abjectly so. Her chain collar is wrapped in duct tape and tight tight tight. SIGH. All sorts of signs this is a dump. I give her a couple bowls of catfood (glad I saved the stuff Devi didn't finish?) and filled a bowl with water. I'm thanked with a slobbered up hand and whines whenever she sees me. Leave a note for the neighbor's back door since I don't have any contact info for her yet. I know people who do pit rescues in the area, so there is that.

I'm torn between glad I didn't go to bed and FUCK NOW I WON'T SLEEP WORRYING.

I'm not a dog person, no danger of my household expanding. But good lord.

I just found a firefly on my bed. I carried him outside and he just kept wandering around on my hand for a while before flying away. It's been nice to see more of those this year.

Some people get fireflies. I get lost cats and dumped pits.

Uhg, I just watched the dog go all defender when a black dude walked down the alley. Me? No response except begging for attention. He (I saw the evidence, it's a boy!) has had experiences, not good.

Pretty good with food, I could take it away, but if I put a hand on his back when eating, he growled and went tense.

Disclaimer: I was being fucking careful.

I have so much to do tomorrow, I need to go to bed, but now I'm all wired.

Scrappy, I would love a good belch. Gas is one of those stupid things that hurts like instanity and is trivial as all hell. Perfect choice.

This is positional, so I'm assuming it's not dire, and I just have to work out how to duplicate my reading position to sleep.

He can breathe, just not swallow. It is some sort of internal allergic reaction.

How does that even work? Did he eat something he can't tolerate? And he has to wait it out?

They've never pinpointed the trigger. Just that it is an allergic response, and yeah, he waits it out NOW. He's had hospital visits that don't do shit, so he skips them now and has us watching him closely in case we have to do a pen trache. He's had all sorts of scopes and whatnot, but..it's a localized internal allergic reaction and they can't figure out what does it.

Dog is looking abject. If I had a boltcutter, he'd be in my basement tonight.

Dog totally climbed in my lap. Fuuuck, I smell like dog. OTOH, looks like I might not need a boltcutter on the collar, hard to tell at this hour under the duct tape.

Fuckit, to bed. Morning's tasks await.

Forgive me, please, if I am butting in.

No, not at all, Strix. I really was looking to get a feel for how whacked what I heard was. Especially when the foster mom admitted that she'd really rather not have to spend time at the hospital if she had to take the kid into the psych ward for evals.

Your instincts are sound. Like I said, you need backup or research, I'm your woman.

Sara, you have good caretaker instincts. You're definitely good for the animal population, even if the baby robins made you sad.

..it's a localized internal allergic reaction and they can't figure out what does it.

Seriously, that would be panic-inspiring. Do they know enough to give him an epi-pen or equivalent thereof?