I've been thinking about this, since lately there have been a lot more strays and "lost/stolen" dogs around here... Kodos is an inside dog, only goes outside if he's supervised, because we don't want him to get stolen or get hurt by other strays in the neighbourhood, etc. What do you do when you see strays? We had a couple pull over in a truck once, just up the road from our house (we were out for a walk) and ask if we'd seen a boxer puppy, about 8 months old, roaming the neighbourhood. For at least a few days afterwards, I just felt terrible for these people that had lost their poor pup, and hoped that they had found him. My husband stopped to pick up a "stray" on the way home from work once, because it had a collar and tags and everything... and then he realized that it was his aunt/uncle's dog (they live a few blocks down from us) so we kept him in our house for a few hours, until they got off work and we could take him home. Usually if I see a dog wandering and nobody else around (or nobody that seems to be the owner), I go out to the front doorstep and call the dog over. If they seem friendly (and I've never had one that wasn't - take a dog out of it's own territory and there's nothing for it to defend) I sit out on the doorstep and pet them for a while, to see if maybe somebody's chasing them in the right direction and might walk by and see me sitting with their dog... and no, I don't worry because if I was trying to steal the dog, why would I be sitting outside with it? If nobody comes along, since we have a dog ourselves, I'll chain/leash the dog somewhere that can be seen from the road in front of our house (in case someone *does* come along) and use the numbers on their tag to try to track down the owners (helping them avoid pound fees, etc). I've never found a stray that I didn't already know, or where the owners *weren't* on their way in the right direction, because it's a famirly small town... if so, I'd just take the dog to PAWS (no-kill shelter for adoption, lost pets, etc). Now, maybe it's because my husband and I would be absolutely devastated if we ever lost Kodos, but I CAN NOT stand seeing a stray and just leaving it to possibly get hit by a car, eat/drink something that could kill them, get hurt by somebody else, etc. And for the record, no, I've never picked up a stray and ended up begging my husband to let me keep it... again, we'd be crushed if we ever lost our pup, and we wouldn't want to do that to another family either.
My dogs use to be masters of escaping and wandering, and it totally freaked me out. Each time I swore I was going to have a heart attack. Personally, if I see a stray wandering I look for tags if the dog lets me near it. If it doesn't have a contact number but it still has a collar, I will let them meander, because from my experience they usually go home. When I see somebody looking for their lost dog, I usually help them look for it if I have time, because I know what they are going through. As for real strays, we don't have many where I live so I have yet to encounter any.
