While I don't often toot my own horn, here is my good deed for the week. I'm writing about it because it might actually help others in the future.

So, I'm at the place where I get my haircut this morning. As I'm walking into the building, I see a dog -- an australian shepherd -- hanging around by the door. She was quite tame and friendly, but also had that look of the lost animal. She had a collar on, which turned out to be an Invisible Fence collar similar to the one pictured above. What I mean is that it has an electrical doodad on it that hits the dog with a shock, uh, correction, if it gets too close to the invisible fence wiring. Unfortunately, aside from the generic-looking collar, there was no other sign of who owned the dog.

Control freak problem solver that I am, I called my wife, who works for Petsafe, which now owns Invisible Fencing. She got the Invisible fencing guy on the phone, and she told me to unscrew the electical leads sticking out from the underside of the collar. Once they were off, I removed the actual collar from the electrical doodad, and there was a serial number on the doodad. I read that out to Jill, who gave it to the IF guy, who was able to track who the owner was! About 10 minutes later, in the middle of my haircut, the guy called and came right over and retrieved his dog. A life saved. Woo-hoo!

The moral of the story is this: if you find a stray with one of these type collars on it and no other owner information, you can track the owner based on the invisible fence's serial number, now that you know where to look. If you ever find a pet that has such a collar, try calling your local dealer, who might be able to track the owner.