So, the kids have been getting up between 6:00 and 6:30 (absolutely no change from school). They have a routine on a checklist they’re supposed to follow, which includes taking care of the pets’ morning needs. On Sunday, this happened…however, the gate to the back yard was standing open. And the dog…did what dogs do, and took off. She was almost immediately picked up by animal control to the east of us, but we didn’t find this out until Monday. We spent Sunday looking for her, then Monday, the neighbor told us. And I found her picture on the local humane society’s lost pets FB page.
I sent Andrew to go get her, but…they were closed. One would have thought that they’d have done a big adoption push on Memorial Day, but…
Anyway, I went to get her yesterday, and she proved (and simultaneously disproved) her intelligence: the humane society volunteers/workers pulled the collar off over her head without unfastening it; they put it back on her the same way. Taught the dog how to get her collar off…which she promptly did when I was trying to walk her back to the car and give her a chance to go piddle on the way.
I picked her fuzzy butt up, carried her over to the car, got the imp into his seat first, then the dog, then the pixie. And the dog spent the six miles between the humane society and home alternating between which child’s lap she smashed (20 lb dog, 51 and 55 lb kids) and whose face she kissed.
Andrew suggested that perhaps the dog went on walkabout because we’d planned to bathe and shear the dog on Sunday. If that was her plan, then she only put it off for a couple days: Andrew and I washed her last night, and I took scissors to her felted hair (did you know that Scotty hair mats like a felted wool sweater?). Hopefully, she’s a bit cooler today. And now that she’s thoroughly dry, we’ll be taking the clippers with the short guard to the rest of the dog fur, likely after supper tonight.
Assuming I can get past the fragile feeling I woke up with this morning.
But without her winter coat, the dog looks a lot more like a Scotty and less like a hairy little miniature black sheep dog from Bugs Bunny.
And that was after I’d gotten over to the old house, met the plumber, and got the leaking pipe under the house fixed. Spent an hour and a half over there, with no furniture, and no internet, but got a chapter of Gods and Monsters written.
Which reminds me: I’m going to have to refill my pen, soon.