15 Months

This is the mutt we all know and love. Mavvy. Here's her story from last week:

On Wednesday, Lewis put her out in the morning. She didn't want to come back in. Occassionally this happens and we put her water outside and we leave her outside all day. Many, many dogs are outside dogs all the time. So it didn't seem like a big deal.

5:45PM I am on my way home from work and I get a phone call. "Do you own a black dog?" Why yes I do! "Well she's running around on Coldwater." Great. I'll be home in 10 minutes. Our nice neighbor, luckily, waited for me. The dog, had dug a hole under the fence to escape.

I came home, filled the hole, lined it with rocks, and proceeded to worry about our options.

Friday night. Lewis and I went out to dinner with our friends Katie and Drew. We came home. Early in the morning, the dog woke up and needed to go to the bathroom. Lew let her out.

2:20 (about 20 minutes later) my cell phone rang. It woke Lewis up and he ran outside to see if the dog was still in the yard. She was not. I ran around the street calling her name, she did not come. I kind of felt all was lost. I walked back to the house and came up the back way, I heard a familiar sniff from the neighbors back yard.


Upon slower inspection, sure enough, my little escape artist was in their backyard. I grabbed her and threw her in the house. When I checked the voice mail from the message I got, it was Adam (neighbor) saying she was in their backyard, she had been trying to get in their yard to play with their two dogs. Coincidentally, they are the ones that puppy sat for us last weekend (while in Tahoe) and she got to stay over and play with their two dogs.

So ... we can not have a dog that digs so frequently and so quickly and gets out so easily. We talked about it, came to no easy agreement, but finally did decide the best thing was an electric fence. Lewis put it up today. At one point, I heard him in the backyard (from the front yard) yelping and I ran back to see if he had been electricuted. No, but he had been shocked.

When he finally got it working, he made me go back and get shocked too. It's not fair to do something to our dog that we are scared to do to ourselves.

Clearly, it did not tickle. It's more surprising than anything else. We left Mavvy in the backyard with it and within the first 5 minutes she barked sharply. She'd been zapped. She did not cry out, she did not whine, she just barked in surprise.

So she is safely stowed in our backyard, and I am fairly confident she will not dig out again. At least not while that wire is running along the base of the fence.

But, aside from the doggy drama, we had a very busy weekend. Friday, as I mentioned, we went out to dinner with friends. Saturday, we drove 2 hours to Possom Kingdom Lake and golfed with Katie and Drew and Jenkins and Suzanne. Saturday night we hung out with Jenkis, Jessie, Paul, Seligy and April. And others, playing boards games. Very fun.

Today, I got up and did laundry. We went to Home Depot, bought the electric fence, bought marigold's, which I show above in their fresh beds. And we bought a new door knob for the backdoor. We're missing a screw, so that project is now moved to another day.

But, if you're interested in pictures from Possum Kingdom Lake ... please see HERE.

Or, if you're interested in an article from The London Times Online about Obama, click HERE. It says it better than I could.