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April 16, 2004
More Grey Hair
I made a substantial addition to my grey hair collection yesterday. I arrived home from work to find our front door standing wide open. Dogs were missing, as was my stepdaughter and her car. The latter wasn't too unusual, since Stepdaughter often takes the dogs for a walk in a nearby park. But then I noticed the dogs' leashes were still here.
Instant panic. I of course thought the worst, but a quick search of the house revealed no signs of a struggle or blood. The dogs adore Stepdaughter, so I reasoned they wouldn't have let anyone harm her without a fight. A quick couple of phone calls confirmed Stepdaughter was fine & at the library. Apparently the front door, which doesn't always latch properly, had been blown open by the strong winds in the afternoon.
The dogs were nowhere to be found and had probably been gone for hours.
By this time I've calmed down to a medium-grade panic. My major concern, besides cars, was that pugs are prone to overheating because of their snubbed noses.....and they can die. I knew Sassy could roam for hours, and Sollie would try his damnedest to keep up with her. I quickly searched our immediate neighborhood. No dogs. I searched the cemetery across the road, thinking they might be hanging out at the duck pond. No dogs. Elementary school up the street. No dogs. I returned home to call Animal Control.
Stepdaughter arrived right after I did. She was already on her cellphone with Animal Control. No dogs. She handed the call off to me so I could give them more details, and she left to continue searching. I finished the call, and headed back out to search. Stepdaughter pulls back into the yard and she's laughing.
Sassy is sitting in her front seat, and so is Sollie. Stepdaughter said she found them just a short distance from the house, trotting down the road like Milo & Otis.....all happy with themselves and headed home. She opened her car door & they jumped right in.
We took them inside, I told them that they were Very Bad Dogs. And gave them both treats. Sollie was dangerously close to heat exhaustion, so I had to put him in a tub full of tepid water and cool him off. Which of course he thought was Very Exciting and he ran around the house like a little madman when I got him out of the tub.
Once they had cooled off and eaten, they both stretched out and went to sleep....all worn out by their adventure. It took several hours for my insides to stop shaking.
Little bastards. I didn't know whether to kiss them or kill them.
Posted by Rita at April 16, 2004 07:47 AM
Comments
They're buggers like that.aren't they? We had one disappear into a cornfield in South Dakota. I swear I never thought I'd see her again.
Posted by: Andy at April 16, 2004 08:15 AM
I sure thought the next time I saw either of them would be lying in the middle of the road. We were lucky.
We've been trying to figure out which one of them got the idea to leave, since they've both been trained since day one that they're never allowed to step foot outside without being on-leash. We suspect it was Sollie, since male pugs are notoriously stubborn and prone to do whatever the hell pops into their little pea brains.
Mike's now calling Sollie "the Wandering Jew". Me, I'm sticking with "ya little bastid".
Posted by: Rita at April 16, 2004 08:24 AM
I'm glad it ended well, and doubly glad you gave them treats.
And I have this great image of Sollie running through the house like a nut.
Posted by: Keith at April 16, 2004 08:26 AM
I figure it's far better for them to think "Home = treats" than "Home = I get my ass beaten for running away". There's a reason Pavlov used dogs for his experiment.
Sollie was such a total spaz I couldn't even dry him off. 30 minutes later he was shivering with cold b/c he was still wet. So then I had to turn on his, er, my space heater so he could sit in front of it until he got dry. Meanwhile I had to put ice cubes in their drinking water to help cool Sassy down.
Spoiled rotten they are.
Posted by: Rita at April 16, 2004 09:14 AM
I'm glad that this turned out well after all. :)
Posted by: Paul Jané at April 16, 2004 04:50 PM
Kiss them and THEN kill them. At the very least you should give them time outs based on dog years.
Posted by: Da Goddess at April 17, 2004 03:48 AM
" I told them that they were Very Bad Dogs. And gave them both treats."
HFS (Holy _ _)! That's exactly what I do.
Posted by: Rodger Schultz at April 17, 2004 12:20 PM
I'm really glad that the pups were fine after their little adventure!
Posted by: bogie at April 18, 2004 04:36 AM