Blue collar, white lettering

MB was forced to repeat herself several times, which she didn't mind so much, since it gave her a chance to voice increasing displeasure and thus advertise to the other customers that the boarding establishment had lost my collar.

"No, it was not in his little bag with his t-shirt and bone."

Staff looked puzzled and concerned.

"We ordered this collar," MB said, "so that his name would be stitched in, along with my phone number."

They wrote it all down as though it made any difference.

"And I need it," she repeated. "It has his tags."

"We understand," they said, which meant: "we look forward to your leaving soon."

"Didn't your husband pick it up with the dog?"

This was an irritating question, since a) MB had picked me up only twenty minutes earlier in front of the very staff persons who were staring at her as though they had never seen her before, and b) the question suggested that it was going to have to be someone else's fault, because it sure couldn't be theirs, and c)the question further suggested that MB was a ding-a-ling who didn't know better than to check with her non-existent husband first.


"I don't have a husband!" MB said testily, which caused them all to think "Oh, of course not. She doesn't have a husband because she's so bitchy. Most people who come in here, pay a small fortune to have their dogs boarded only to find out that the boarding establishment has lost his specially-ordered collar along with his rabies tags are really pleasant about it, especially after we've repeatedly questioned whether she didn't lose it herself between the time she picked the dog up and returned twenty minutes later to ask for the collar.

"We're sorry."

MB stood there and waited for them to say, "We'll gladly replace the tags and the collar if we cannot locate them," but they didn't say that. "We'll call you," they said instead.

"I had to order that collar," said MB, whose mother had actually ordered it, "and it has his tags. I can't take him for a walk without his collar."

"We'll call you."

MB called them back several hours later. "Hello, I'm wondering whether you found my dog's collar yet."

Staffer "Ingrid" said, "We don't take the dog's collars when we board them. We remove the dog's collars and give them back to the person dropping the dog off."

MB: "When I returned to ask for Lokey's collar, two other people came in to drop off their dogs for boarding, and their dogs' collars were not removed."

Ingrid: "Do you think I'm lying?"

MB: "No, but you just told me that you always removed the dog's collar, and yet I saw two dogs dropped off without their collars being removed. I am thinking maybe some of you remove the collars and some of you don't. Maybe Lokey's collar fell behind a filing cabinet."

Ingrid: "It didn't fall behind a filing cabinent. We will continue to look for it."

MB: "That's nice to know. Thanks for your help."

I guess MB won't be taking me back to that boarding establishment. I have no sympathy. Her little brouhaha over my lost collar is nothing next to my distress at having been boarded in the first place.

Plus, I was out running an errand recently with MB and she found the collar in the console. I looked at her and she looked at me and then I looked away and she just kept driving.

My new collar is green with white lettering. Clem doesn't like it because the lettering is very large, and he says that while MB and I are sitting outside Helios sipping wine on the patio, creeps can read her phone number from three tables away.

MB says she likes the color better.