The Great Escape

It is a very scary thing to come home to an empty house when I am used to two noses pushing as hard as they can at the door when I come through it. But this past Monday, that's what happened. No noses, no barking or scrambling to jump up on me--just silence. I had forgotten what that was like, and I didn't like it.

After investigating the backyard, I found that the resourceful little rascals had moved a piece of wood AND a brick to find a small hole in our fence, purposely left open to allow the hose for the hottub to drain a few times a year.

There are plenty of you who know the panic that I felt at that moment--I felt like a bad mother, like I'd neglected some important part of dog safety. I grabbed the keys, the flashlight, and two leashes, and headed out, calling their names, pausing every time I heard a dog bark. Luckily, I ran into our neighbors who were in puppy school with us. They got their whole family out wandering the neighborhood(s), looking for Frazil and Nilas. After about two hours, I heard the high-pitched barks of my dogs. I was standing in between two houses, and kept calling their names to hear the barks. I was graciously allowed through one of the houses to the backyard, where I discovered the neighbor kids and my dogs on the other side of the fence in the house behind us.

After attempting to climb the fence, even using a ladder before common sense set in, I ran around the block to the other house, and into the paws of my poor lost doggies. They were beside themselves. They had gotten into the backyard of a vacant house, which is why no one had called (other than our dogs don't really let anyone approach them if we're not there.... we'll have to work on that). The neighbors of that house had heard kids calling for dogs, and realized that they'd seen two "strays" in the backyard of that vacant house. They had given the girls water, and were about to give them food (both of the neighbors are dog owners).

I feel very lucky this week to have only lost them for a day. We have, of course, made appropriate changes to the backyard (which involves a lot of chicken wire), and are thankful for the generosity of so many people in our neighborhood, friends and strangers alike.