Dog Days

Yesterday was glorious. The sun was brightly shining, the air was warm, and I put on a t-shirt for the first time in months.

Naturally, Flacko chose yesterday to break out of our yard and take himself on a little walk.

Because we’re planning on adding a garage this year, we haven’t fenced in the yard yet. We’ve got chicken wire staked around the septic system and connected to the deck as a temporary prison for the dogs, but Flacko has discovered he can get to the 2nd step of the deck, wiggle through the gap between the hand railing and stair, and bypass the chicken wire by leaping to the ground.

We recently added air conditioning to the house and when the HVAC guys cemented the compressor in place, they had to dig up some plants to make room for it. Our neighbor, who lived in the house before she sold it to move next door, mentioned a few times that we’d better replant the plants soon or they’d die.

Given how much we’ve got going on (the lawsuit, jobs, fixing up the other stuff that needs to be done to the house), the yard was going to be at the bottom of my priority list this year. Evidently our neighbor felt differently, so yesterday I replanted the plants.

While I was dragging the nearly-dead plant to the new hole I’d dug at the back of the yard, the dogs were enjoying themselves in their fenced area. Suddenly Mina and Paco began to bark. This wasn’t their usual “I see a squirrel! Let me out to eat it!” bark, but an annoyed, “Hey, that’s not fair” bark. I looked up and saw Flacko sniffing the bushes–the bushes that were outside of the chicken wire area.

“Hey! Get back in there!” I yelled.

Flacko looked up at me, determined I was full of bullshit, and continued examining the bushes. I popped the plant in the hole and hurriedly swept the dirt back around the roots. No time to water it. Heck, no time to even check if all the roots were covered.

Flacko raced around the yard as I ran to put Mina and Paco inside the house. If Mina had been the escapee, it would have been a simple matter of picking her up and popping her back in the yard. If Paco had escaped, he would have merely run to me, and then obediently followed me back in the house.

But Flacko? Flacko had issues.

1. No one was allowed to pick him up. This stemmed from prior abuse before he’d landed in the rescue group from which we’d adopted him.

2. If anyone tried to pick him up, he would bite. And bite hard. (During one of his early visits to my parents’ house, I’d tried to leash him to take him outside to potty. He bit me, leaving bloody marks on my hand. My father said, “You better return him!”)

3. He was afraid of his leash. And would bite if it came close to him. See notes 1 and 2.

I came back outside with a leash and a piece of cheese. Flacko was now happily running along the back of the yard, and as I watched, he disappeared into the trees between our yard and the surrounding neighbors.

“Flacko!” I yelled. “Cheese! Treat! Come!”

I ran along the back yard and into the neighbors’ yard next to us. No Flacko.

“FLACKO!”

I rattled the plastic around the cheese. Flacko wasn’t biting. Cheese? Who cared about cheese when there was a whole stinky world to sniff?

I got in the car with the leash and cheese. I started up the car. Down the street, a man wheeling a baby in a carriage and walking a large dog glanced at me curiously. I drove slowly behind him, trying to subtly follow him, because I knew a tiny black dog named Flacko might explode out of the trees at any minute, and try to kill the large dog.

Eventually the man started looking nervously back at me and I figured I’d better pass him or he’d think I was trying to steal his baby or dog or maybe even both. I drove around him and circled onto the next street, which ran behind our street. I rolled down the window and shouted “Flacko! Cheese!” as I drove.

As I came to the house that was directly behind ours, Flacko came trotting, three-legged*, from the house. “Oh there you are,” his face said. “It took you long enough.”

I opened the car door and he leaped inside, just as if he’d been waiting for a taxi.

I snapped his leash on while he was eating the cheese and took him back home. Mina and Paco greeted him with snarls and angry sniffing. Why should he get to roam freely while they were trapped at home?

Sniffing and barking over, Flacko jumped onto the couch and gave a deep sigh. He closed his eyes. The Great Adventurer had returned home, and if the other dogs were good, he might tell them what he’d sniffed–after he got in a good nap.

*No, we didn’t cut off his leg. For some reason, he likes to walk and run on three legs. He alternates which back leg he holds up. Surprisingly, he can run very fast on three legs. Yes, he has issues.

Posted by: ssjane | April 19, 2004 | 11:32 am
Posted in: Dogs