Prison Break

Imagine this:

It's about 70 degrees out and you're walking home from running your Sunday afternoon errands.  The sun is shining and you start thinking "today would be a good day to do some yardwork or just hang out on the porch and read a book."  You turn off the bike path, pass the soccer field and the playground, and hit Herbert road.  You look up ahead toward your house and see a dog with no leash walking toward you.  And, wait, what's that behind the dog?  Is that a lady in a bathing suit with no shoes on?  No way.  It's a sunny day and all but it certainly hasn't been warm enough to be hanging out poolside.  She seems to be speaking to the dog but you can't tell if they're actually together because the dog isn't responding.  Not even a little bit.  She keeps switching from a nice "good doggy" voice to something that sounds eerily familiar to Linda Blair.  You think that maybe at one time she liked the dog but is quickly changing her feelings.

That was my Sunday afternoon.  No, not the one walking home from Sunday errands.  I was the crazy lady running the streets in a bathing suit chasing after a dog who suddenly decided she wanted nothing to do with me. After the Newton 10K Sunday morning, I headed home while Micah left for his softball practice.  It was such a nice day outside, I decided to throw on the bathing suit, breakout the lawn chairs, and finish Birds Without Wings by Louis de Bernieres.  There have been a few instances where Sota escaped the yard (Snow Moat Snow Problem) but I thought that there was no way she would try a stunt like that with me sitting right in front of her.  Apparently I was wrong.  I look behind me and I see her pulling our make-shift fencing down with her paws.  I yelled at her and she got down.  30 seconds later, different spot, same move.  Again, yelled at her and she got down.  I decided to take her inside once I got to a better stopping point in the book, but before I made it to the end of the page she was scrambling to get over the bushes.  Without thinking, I launched myself out of the lawn chair and tried to catch her in the air but I only managed to terrify her.  Normally when she gets out, she just goes to the front door or comes right back when you call her.  Since I scared her she refused to come within 5 feet of me.  That's how I ended up 3 blocks away from the house in my bathing suit and barefoot.  We passed someone about a block and a half from the house who asked what was going on.  I briefly explained that my husband's dog (she's Micah's dog when she's doing bad things) found a way out of the back yard and wouldn't come back.  The woman walked off and I didn't think anything of it until about two minutes later I saw her walking toward us.  I told her Sota was afraid of strangers and not to try to catch her.  So she just stood in front of Sota until I could catch up.  I guess Sota decided that of the two options, I was the least scary (I had access to her food and water, which helped a little I'm sure) so she went with the lesser of two evils.  I led her home by the collar and told her she was never going outside again.  Ever.

This whole ordeal really killed the laying out mood, so I changed and focused my attention on fixing the fence.  Micah and I replaced the entire fence with a sturdier wire and t-posts.  Hopefully that will keep the beast at bay.