(More than) Fourinarow.net

To put over my head.

We have a lovely new fence.  An absolute necessity with kids and a dog.  Especially a dog that runs off and kids that give her every opportunity to do so.  In just a month without a fence, I thought I’d go crazy.  I can’t tell you how many times I had to run down the street calling for the dog with my little ones following behind.  A few times we had to get into the van to track her down.  More than once she accompanied us to school because she chose to run off right when we needed to leave for a pick up or drop off.

The times I’ve had to give up tracking her down in the name of my kids’ safety she’s always come home after a short stint around the neighborhood, keeping me from worrying too much.

I thought our beautiful new fence was going to solve some of my dog/kid problems.

What was I thinking?  I mean, it’s not like I had the fence guys install high-tech locks.  And, since all of the kids are able to open the gates, I’m not sure that having the fence has improved our run-off to not-run-off ratio.  It’s not that the kids don’t shut the gates (or close the doors), it’s just that they do it very sloooooowly.  And, they have to hold the door/gate open allllllll the way so that they have plenty of room go go through it, you know?  Which, of course, means that Cheerio has plenty of time and plenty of room to also go through.

Today’s run-off experience has to be in the top 10 worst.  So far, anyway.

After school all of the children and the dog were playing outside in the beautifully fenced backyard.  I was on the deck and in and out of the house keeping an eye out.  So, I happened to witness the opening of the gate, the running off of the dog and the looks of two guilty boys.  (Just because I saw it didn’t mean I had time to stop it.)

Off I went, leash and treats in hand, with my children trailing behind, to fetch the dog.  She hit the park, though, and none of my tricks worked.  There was too much sniffing and running to do.  I gave up and headed back to the house, gathering my children as I went.  After 30 minutes or so, I decided we needed to take the van on a Cheerio Hunt.  We drove slowly through the neighborhood shouting “CHEEEER-I-O!” as my neighbors looked on in pity.

No luck.

We returned home dogless and I started to worry and wonder how much a dog catcher ticket would cost me. I also started to envision having to explain to four sad faces that the dog had met with some terrible demise.  It didn’t take much imagination to know what Dan would say about it all.

After about an hour, the phone rang.  It was the vet.  Had we lost our dog?  Yep!  Okay, they’d give my number to the person who found her.  I waited… no call.  I called the vet back.  It’s the police that have her, they told me and gave me the number.

Shit.

I called the police, got passed around, and then someone told me that a neighbor actually had Cheerio and she was going to bring her home.  Just in case, they gave me her name, address and phone number.  Great on the one hand – we’d have our dog back, not so great on the other – the police were giving out people’s addresses somewhat freely.

As my neighbors looked on, a very nice woman (with a dog of her own) brought Cheerio home.  I thanked her profusely, of course, and then got Cheerio and myself back into the house and away from the onlookers as quickly as possible.

Whew!

Of course I called Dan.  And, just as I launched into the story, I happened to glance out the back window.  Some man was back there, shutting my gate.  Weird.  What was that about?  I went to the front door and there he was (a neighbor) with my next door neighbor (who has a perfectly behaved dog that is never on a leash and always comes back. [Whatever - they have no kids]). They saw me standing there and told me they were just shutting the gate behind Cheerio – she had run off again and had come back.  “No!” I said.  “Yes,” they said in unison.  “Uh, thanks,” I said meekly, shutting the door quickly.

I’m thinking we should have gone with high tinsle electric.