Joe and Precious

One night several months ago I was feeling really depressed and homesick for my mountains and forests. Lacking a better safe alternative, I decided to go and sit in Dupont Circle for a while (it's not exactly isolation in a forest, but at least it wasn't my apartment and it wasn't too likely that I would get mugged or murdered).

It wasn't long before a dog came over wanting to be petted, and then her owner, a homeless man, came over and started a conversation with me. He was really nice, and didn't seem crazy at all until he told me that he knew all the governors and a good chunk of the world's leaders.

We had a really great conversation for about an hour, and Precious (the dog) lay down and let me scratch her stomach, which Joe told me she hardly ever let people do.

That evening has been one of my favorite memories of DC.

Now, today, I saw this article in the Washington Post - some trigger-happy cop shot Precious on the pretext that she was supposedly about to attack him. She is not an attacking kind of dog.

I started crying when I read it, feeling so bad for Joe. Luckily my officemate wasn't at her desk, so nobody at work caught me. I'm sure they would all think I'm crazy if they knew I was crying over a homeless man losing his dog.

Course now all of you know that I am a crazy girl who cries over homeless people losing their pets, but I figure either you don't know me, so why should I care, or you know me well enough that this sort of behavior from me does not come as a surprise.

I feel like I should do something for Joe. What is the appropriate thing to do for someone who loses their pet? Keeping in mind that I can't count on seeing him at a specific time, so getting flowers or something wouldn't work because I couldn't be sure of getting them to him at the right time. Ideas?

R.I.P., Precious.