Annie

I found out my dog walker had been tying my dog outside a grocery store while she ran errands. She was charging me $25 for a forty-minute walk. My dog, Archie, is a seven-year-old shaggy brown terrier mix. I hired a woman named Melissa to walk him three afternoons a week while I'm at work. She'd been doing it for almost four months. Every afternoon, she'd send me a picture of Archie outside with a message saying he'd had a great walk. Last Wednesday, a woman from my neighborhood sent me a photo. Archie was tied to a bicycle rack outside a grocery store. He was sitting beside a shopping cart, looking toward the entrance. The woman recognized him from walks around the neighborhood. She said he'd been there when she arrived and was still there when she came out twenty minutes later. I called Melissa. She answered from her car. I asked where Archie was. "Oh, we're just finishing his walk." I told her someone had photographed him tied outside the grocery store. She went quiet. Then she said she'd only stopped to pick up a few things. "Five minutes, tops." I told her he'd been there for at least twenty. She sighed. "He's a dog. He doesn't know the difference." I asked whether she'd been leaving him outside stores regularly. She said, "Not every time." That wasn't the answer I wanted.