A couple years ago I showed my wife some pictures that Swingman had posted about his cute little dog. Since we had recently lost our dog after about
15 years, she decided that we would look for something of a similar breed. So we looked around a bought a bouncing little puppy which we named Bucky. When I bought him, I went through my back yard and puppy proofed the fence. I had fantasies that would be the end of it.It turns out that this dog, who weighs 15 pounds, can escape through an opening of an inch or so. I have replaced numerous fence boards, piled up rocks on the bottoms of fences, applied mesh fencing over the wood fence and even stacked up some tires in strategic places. I have reinforced the fence in numerous places and even replaced a couple posts. And the little bastard still gets out.
He is a sweet dog and loves people, particularly kids. He gets out and finds someone and makes friends. Today, it took us about an hour and a half to find him. He was scooped up by a friendly neighbor, who I have not met until today, and I ran into him while looking for him. He is a nice dog, but definitely intellectually limited. We can not continue to rely on the kindness of strangers for him to come back. We are putting some kind of ID tag on him and getting him microchipped.
It turns out he got out through a small animal trail under the corner. It was completely covered with vegetation. I am sure he just followed his nose and kind of fell through. I filled in the hole with concrete chunks and will finish it off tomorrow with some concrete. And it turns out I have to do some fence repairs on the fence from two different neighbor's property. The neighbors are all totally cool and love little Bucky. The guy who found him has three small dogs of his own. And they are happy to help with fence repairs with paying for materials and helping me do the repairs.
If all goes well, I will spend the next three days doing these repairs. Sooooooo....., ask me what I am going to do for labor day weekend? That's right, creating a puppy fortress, a Bucky jail, a fence system that can withstand full scale frontal assaults from zombie hordes. I feel like a prepper preparing for Armageddon. I also have to totally surround the deck in back with some wire mesh fencing.
The neighbors have been totally cool about this. Another neighbor heard about out little adventure today and offered to contribute some fencing materials for any kind of repair. He just fenced his yard and had some surplus materials and had met Bucky while my wife walked him. And he wanted to help. That was nice. I will go by tomorrow and see what he has. I am being totally paranoid. All common repairs are not adequate against a wily little escape artist who can somehow or another squeeze through a small opening that a mouse would have trouble getting through.
My honey wanted a small dog that was social and did not make big messes in the back yard. Bucky certainly qualifies in this fashion. But this escape artist BS in a pain in the ass! Swingman, this is all your fault! I should have never showed Dawn the pictures!
Grumble, grumble, bitch, bitch.
End of rant.