Tyson Cash was making his usual morning rounds, collecting his canine clients on his pup bus to take them to doggy daycare, when he noticed one of his regular dogs was accompanied by a pooch he had never seen before. “I was like, ‘That’s strange, they didn’t tell me they were getting another dog,’” said Cash, who runs Keller Creek Boarding and Grooming in Franklin County, Ga., with his wife.
Motley, a Labrador retriever who has been going to daycare at Keller Creek for more than three years, usually waits for the bus on his front porch. On this particular morning, July 16, there was another Lab with him. Cash contacted Motley’s owners to ask them if they got a new dog, and they told him no, but there was a stray Lab that had been wandering the area for a few days.
Residents were feeding him and sometimes letting him spend the night. Motley trotted over to the pup bus, and the stray dog followed him. When Motley hopped on, the second dog tried to do the same.
“He wanted on the bus badly. He was doing everything he could to get on with the other dogs,” said Cash, explaining that he couldn’t let the stray dog on the bus. “I didn’t know about his vaccination status.
I didn’t know if he was on flea and tick prevention,” said Cash. “I didn’t want to jeopardize all the other dogs.” He asked his wife to post a photo of the dog on Facebook to try to track down his owner.
Then, as Cash drove off in the pup bus, the abandoned yellow Lab gave chase. “I.