Following the story of the dog from Total Muni 2018.

My favorite part of riding every Muni transit line in one day for Total Muni 2018 was meeting a lot of interesting characters.

This being San Francisco, the most interesting one of all was a dog. Many of you were just as captivated as we were by Felton — a.k.a. Felicia — and so here’s a not-quite-happy, not-quite-sad update on the little pup. Her fate would make an excellent conundrum for an ethicist.

As a refresher, my colleague Peter Hartlaub and I rode every Muni line on April 30. We were waiting on a platform for the T-Third when a darkbrown dog without tags and with dirt and twigs in her fur came bounding toward us. She had a collar and the end of a chewed-off leash around her neck. She followed us onto the train and onto buses — and we just couldn’t shake her.

Photographer Jessica Christian peeled off to take Felton — we named her after the 54-Felton bus route — to the city’s Animal Care and Control. Hartlaub quickly offered to adopt Felton.

Animal Care and Control put a five-day hold on the pup to see if her owner would come forward, and he did. Shelter workers said it was clear when he visited that he and the dog — actually named Felicia and about 8 months old — had a special connection. He admitted he’d wandered away from her at a public event near where we encountered her on Muni.

But that was just the beginning of the story. The

owner, a man who lives in supportive housing in the Tenderloin, owed Animal Care and Control $190 for Felicia’s room and board. His supportive housing complex gave him a check for 20 percent, and Hartlaub generously paid the rest to ensure that the dog was released.

The man showed up but forgot to bring the check for the 20 percent, and didn’t come back. The shelter was in contact with him by telephone, and he kept saying he’d return. I visited Felicia about a week after Total Muni. She was much cleaner than she’d been when we found her and was in a space cordoned off with chain-link fencing.

Deb Campbell, spokeswoman for Animal Care and Control, said the story wasn’t unusual. The shelter receives about 10,000 animals a year, many belonging to people living difficult lives, some of them on the streets, in supportive housing, in jail or in hospitals.

There’s no deadline to retrieve a pet, as long as the animal shows no signs of abuse or neglect and the person stays in touch with the shelter.

“We want to work with people who love their pets,” Campbell said, kneeling to pet the very happy and excitable Felicia.

“She’s a happy little wellfed, cute dog. If she was cowering or doing something where we thought she’d been mistreated, we’d note that,” Campbell said. “For a lot of dogs, nobody shows up.”

Campbell, who has worked at the shelter for 19 years, gave me a tour. The shelter takes all animals brought to its doors. And I do mean all. There were, of course, lots of dogs and cats. Plus rabbits, guinea pigs, pigeons, a gecko, several quail and a rooster. And that’s just the everyday crew.

“Oh my god, we’ve had alligators, huge pigs, horses and donkeys, rattlesnakes, poisonous spiders,” she said.

There was a possum struck and killed by a car, but the babies in her pouch survived. There have been raccoons and chinchillas.

A sign of a booming economy is a light load at the shelter, and that’s the case now. Back during the recession, many pet owners abandoned their animals at the shelter because they couldn’t afford to take care of them.

Ariana Luchsinger runs the shelter’s Fetch program, which allows longer-stay dogs like Felicia to exercise outside twice a day. Many dogs she works with belong to homeless people, who Luchsinger said are some of the “most diligent owners” she’s ever met.

“There are always the bad apples, but for every one you hear about like that, there are 100 cases out there where the person is taking better care of their pets than they are of themselves,” she said.

I don’t know much about Felicia’s owner except that he seems flaky for wandering away from his dog, forgetting the check to retrieve her and leaving her at the shelter for so long. He did come back, though — eventually. On Friday, he took Felicia home — 11 days after her arrival.

Here’s hoping it’s a happy life for both of them. We’ll miss you, Felicia.

Harsh words: I don’t know about you, but this sped-up mayoral election seems to be dragging on forever. It seems like the comment I hear most often is, “Who are you going to vote for? None of them are really grabbing my attention.”

On Saturday, attention was certainly grabbed — in a bad way.

Agonafer Shiferaw, a landlord in the Fillmore district and the former owner of the now-shuttered Rasselas Jazz Club on Fillmore Street, invited candidates Mark Leno and Jane Kim to a forum to discuss their vision for the neighborhood.

Shiferaw said the Fillmore has been “completely devastated” and that the city’s pledge to reinvigorate it has faltered. He didn’t invite Supervisor London Breed, who represents the neighborhood, because he said he’s already “very familiar” with her and wanted to hear from her challengers.

That didn’t sit well with some of Breed’s supporters, who shouted down Kim and called her some horribly racist names. The scene grew so volatile, Shiferaw said he called 911 and said he believes four or five others in the audience did too. But the crowd broke up before police arrived, and the forum ended early.

Sheryl Davis, executive director of the Human Rights Commission and a Breed supporter, was at the event. She wasn’t one of the people shouting at Kim, but she said there’s a lot of trauma in the neighborhood. That was what was on display Saturday, she said.

“Everybody wants to talk about community, but when real community shows up, people call the police,” Davis said.

Kim and Breed released cordial statements condemning the language used and calling for unity.

With just three weeks to go until the June 5 election, it is truly anybody’s game. Political consultant John Whitehurst said his firm facilitated a poll two weeks ago of frequent voters to test a ballot measure. (He wouldn’t say which measure.)

The poll also included questions about the mayor’s race. Whitehurst didn’t give me exact numbers, but said Breed is in the high 20s, Leno is in the low 20s and Kim is in the high teens.

The fact that nobody is polling above 30 percent is telling, Whitehurst said, and means ranked-choice voting, in which voters can list their top three candidates in order, will decide the election. Also telling is that a third of the electorate is undecided this late in the game.

“Any of the three of them could win,” Whitehurst said.

So who would he put money on?

“One of the three of them,” he quipped.

Photos by Jessica Christian / The Chronicle Volunteer Jody Huth leads Felicia through the halls of San Francisco Animal Care and Control.

An Animal Care and Control worker handles a white pigeon, one of the array of animals in the facility.

Photos by Jessica Christian / The Chronicle Above: A San Francisco Animal Care and Control employee cleans kennels. The facility has handled all kinds of animals, from poisonous spiders to full-size pigs.

Left: Felicia the dog, formerly known as Felton from Total Muni 2018, plays in the Animal Care and Control yard with Jody Huth, a volunteer with Fetch, which gives exercise to longer-stay dogs.