So the other day, Justice jumped the fence (again, gragh… must find way to dog-proof yard), and yehaw, I had to go find her.
I’m obviously worried about her, and rather stressed out, and so Carol Ann says “Don’t worry, if she doesn’t come back, we’ll always have this Justice!” and shows me the stuffed lab puppy I bought her.
This is much funnier in retrospect than it was at the time. At the time, I was trying to figure how I could throttle her in a way I wouldn’t regret later. I settled on a sharp, “Carol Ann, you cannot replace my BELOVED PET with a TOY.” I tried to tell her that it wasn’t funny, but it really was.
At least, once Justice came back (a few minutes later — she hadn’t gone far, and her recall is pretty good these days) it was.
I chose this picture for this post, because the sleepy “pleh” of her sticking her tongue out is roughly her attitude towards stressing me out and worrying me over her little unsupervised trips around the neighbourhood. Also, because it’s cute.
Would a dog run be practical/possible?
God no. What’s the point? She’s got an acre to run around in, I have no interest in reducing that to 20 sq ft. She goes outside to get exercise, not to pace around in circles…
I just need to find the spot she’s getting over the fence (I think I have an idea, I just need to prove it) and then fix the spot. Even then, she generally only jumps the fence when there’s something Terribly Interesting on the other side that she Must Have, which is why said escapes are reasonably rare.
Fair enough. I thought that reducing her running area would be bad, but I couldn’t think of a better solution that was cheaper. Making the fences higher is probably pretty expensive.
nah, if it got that bad, she’d just be restricted to supervised running in the back yard. I’m happy most nights to walk around with her (well, I walk, she runs like a lunatic) for a while anyway — those are our best training sessions. :)