I've picked up a few dogs in my time, it's just plain dangerous to let them wander aimlessly for both the dog and any road users around.

The last time it happened I was in the woods with my sister and our four dogs when a beautiful retriever went racing backwards and forwards past us, seeming more distressed each time. Eventually we caught it and put it on a lead to calm it down, and wandered about to see/hear if anyone was looking for it, but couldn't find anybody nearby. So about 15 mins later I rang the number on his tag and the lady who answered was horrified as the dog was supposed to be in the care of a dogwalker while she was at work. I said I'd take the dog home (which still meant a further 20 min walk to get out of the woods during which time we still didn't see anyone looking for a dog, despite asking other dog walkers if they'd seen somebody) and they could pick the dog up from there, and she rang the walker to let her know what had happened. When the walker got to my house she launched in with 'I wasn't far away, he was just having a run, blah blah blah', no please or thank-you and took the dog off. Two things here - should I have left an obviously distressed dog in the hope that someone was looking for him (answer NO - I'm just not prepared to abandon a dog in distress). And as a dog walker shouldn't she have been looking him a bit harder once she realised he was missing - we never heard anyone calling for the dog, nor did we see anyone looking for him in the area? But that's just me I suppose.

People are so rude sometimes. We found a dog running in and out of traffic on a very busy road, just about managed to get hold of it, no tag on, so rang our vet who said it might be chipped so could we bring it down to be scanned, which we did, the vets is about half an hour away, as we walked in the owner was on the phone to see if anyone had bought a dog in of that description, it was his dog and he said to the woman could we bring it back for him save him coming out!!!! As it happened he did live fairly close to us, ( not the point though) got to the front door, he opened it and more or less just grabbed the dog out of our arms without so much as a thank you!!!! And we had driven around for ages!!! He certainly didnt look very pleased to have his dog back either.