Stray Dog Endears Himself to Stranger By 'Playing Possum' When She Greets Him

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Driving to work one day through the barrio area of Pacific Coast Highway, I saw a man walking a German Shepherd on a leash, with a small, curly-haired, whitish dog trailing happily behind them.

I thought, "How cute, the little guy gets to be off lead," but my delight turned into anger and panic when the man whirled around and tried kicking at the little dog and shooing him off. Ignoring the traffic, I whipped a U-turn and pulled into a parking lot. 

I jumped out of my car, shouting at the man, "Is this your dog?!" He said that no, it wasn't his dog and he didn't know whose it was and didn't care. I bent down and said, "Hi baby," to which his response was to roll on his back with his feet in the air, playing dead. I laughed and said, "Oh, so you're going to play opossum, huh?"

Dirty, ragged, covered in fleas, he had been subsisting on corn that chickens eat. I had three dogs at home, two littermate Border Collies, who were elderly, and a Maltipoo I had rescued a couple of years before. I thought, "Four dogs? What are you doing?"

However, that didn't stop me from loading him into my car and driving on to work. He sat quietly in my car for an hour while I took care of clients, and several of them came out to see him and said they would take him if I decided not to keep him. One even opened her checkbook and wrote me a hefty check for his future needs. I was in tears with gratitude.

I did go by the local animal shelter (okay, high-kill pound, more like it) to see if anyone was missing him and to leave his information. I then took him home with me.

He is a little clown and a big lover. And after the loss of his sister, he keeps my nearly 17 year old Border Collie on his toes. His playmate is my other rescue, Buckley, and he is my velcro dog.