"Lily" Houdini Dog

Well the honeymoon is over. We have been leaving Lily out in the back yard since we have too small of a crate - the new one is on the way, should be here Wednesday depending on the impact from weather from the Hurricane (the vet supply store is in Dothan, AL)- she has been enjoying herself sunning, pooping, and hearing the other neighborhood dogs bark.

Today we got back from church and went to get her from the back yard - "Lily, Lily" No dog. No response. She was gone. As I went around the corner I saw that she had dug under a portion of the fence. Let me tell you, she worked at this - slid on her belly through a hole that was 6 inches deep (I only thought about taking pictures of the hole after I had fixed the breach. I wasn't in the journalistic frame of mind).

Instant PANIC! "What do we do?" I grabbed two leashes and started driving around the neighborhood, Jen started walking. No dog! SHIT! So here we were, just "test driving" a dog from an adoption agency and I had to call the lady who had been fostering her and tell her that the dog had escaped - that phone call sucked.

I picked Jen up and we drove around the neighborhood, talking about how helpless it felt and that the last thing that we wanted to do was see her dead on the road, or have to go home and have to try and sleep, and in my case, drive to work without having found the dog. At that moment Jen says, "There she is, there she is." Sure enough, I look down a street and Lily is panting and trotting along. We went around the block and saw her. I pull over, get out of the car, and whistle. Instead of seeing that I am there to rescue her she freaks out and runs away. Stupid dog.

I grab a leash and run through the yard out a hole in the back fence and into the elementary school property and she is gone. No where in sight. Vanished. Shit! Our friend Suz drove from her house to help us look. Up and down streets. I was walking through the neighborhood just hoping to get a glimpse of the dog - twice as frustrated now that we have seen her and she has vanished. It was probably an hour.

I was walking around a subdivision and speaking to a man installing a mail box and my cell rings - it's Jen. She says, "I went back to the house and Lily is now digging back into the yard through the same hole. Oh no! She's digging back out again."

So Jen grabs the dog, puts the dirty thing in the car, and shuts the door. Whew! Got her.

So we bathe the dirty dog, and I go to Home Depot and get bricks and dig into the ground, bury the bricks and cover them up - She will not dig out from the same spot again. I was so relieved. I called the lady back and let her know that she came back home - pretty smart considering she was almost a mile away from our home and she had only been here for 1.5 days. Amazing.

So she is now crapped out on the floor - and will probably sleep all night and tomorrow. Her pads are raw from digging and she walks with a limp. But she is home and I can sleep.

WH