Mignarda
Forums Enthusiast
There's no fool like an old fool, and perhaps no old fool like the one who's addressing you now.
A month or so back I regaled the board with the story of how I nearly lost Dickens when he got spooked while off-leash at the wooded area behind the Governor's Mansion in our home city of Dover, Delaware.
I thought I knew what had spooked him, and made my mind up that it was a one-off thing that would never happen again. Today, it happened again.
This time, though, he wasn't spooked, at least as far as I could see. I bent over to pick up a stack of official-looking papers that someone had left lying about in that area, and a minute later, when I looked up, I found Dickens about a hundred yards away, proceeding in the direction we usually went on that particular walk.
I've trained Dickens to respond to a dog whistle, but when I whistled, he stopped, looked up in my direction, and proceeded to canter onward, away from me, and toward a hill that bordered on a very busy street in the middle of town. I then lost sight of him.
It was impossible to say which direction he had turned. My car was parked about a half-mile away in the public park, and I spent about twenty minutes looking in that vicinity. I then walked to the car and drove all around the area. No sight of him. It was getting dark by then, and I decided to go home, put on warmer clothes, and spend the rest of the night looking for him. I had reconciled myself to the fact that he was lost, and that I might never see him again.
My house is about a mile away from the point where Dickens was lost. Because the area is past Route 13, which is a very busy three-lane highway running both ways, I've always driven by car to the park where we commence our Sunday walk. We have never walked from the house to the park.
Upon arriving home I looked for Diana, my wife, ready to ask her to drop everything she was doing and help me in the search for Dickens. All the lights were on in the house, and Diana was nowhere to be seen, although her purse was still hanging in its usual place; a clear sign that she ought to have been home.
I went into my room to grab a heavy jacket. Suddenly I heard Diana's voice coming from the kitchen door, and along with that voice, the familiar sound of four paws ambling across the kitchen floor. The next thing I knew, the cold, wet nose of my big, beautiful Sheltie was right up in my face.
To make a long story short, Dickens had made his way home, down a very busy street, across six lanes of an incredibly busy highway, along a route he had never traveled in his life.
Diana told me that one of our neighbors, who lives three doors down, had rung the doorbell and inquired whether we knew that our Collie was running loose in the alleyway behind the house. "We have a big Sheltie," she replied, "but he's out walking with my husband." Bemused, she went outside to see Dickens those few doors down, associating with the woman's Beagles. She called him over, and he came right to her, absolutely none the worse for wear.
It's been four hours now, as I write this, and I'm still quite overwrought.
A month or so back I regaled the board with the story of how I nearly lost Dickens when he got spooked while off-leash at the wooded area behind the Governor's Mansion in our home city of Dover, Delaware.
I thought I knew what had spooked him, and made my mind up that it was a one-off thing that would never happen again. Today, it happened again.
This time, though, he wasn't spooked, at least as far as I could see. I bent over to pick up a stack of official-looking papers that someone had left lying about in that area, and a minute later, when I looked up, I found Dickens about a hundred yards away, proceeding in the direction we usually went on that particular walk.
I've trained Dickens to respond to a dog whistle, but when I whistled, he stopped, looked up in my direction, and proceeded to canter onward, away from me, and toward a hill that bordered on a very busy street in the middle of town. I then lost sight of him.
It was impossible to say which direction he had turned. My car was parked about a half-mile away in the public park, and I spent about twenty minutes looking in that vicinity. I then walked to the car and drove all around the area. No sight of him. It was getting dark by then, and I decided to go home, put on warmer clothes, and spend the rest of the night looking for him. I had reconciled myself to the fact that he was lost, and that I might never see him again.
My house is about a mile away from the point where Dickens was lost. Because the area is past Route 13, which is a very busy three-lane highway running both ways, I've always driven by car to the park where we commence our Sunday walk. We have never walked from the house to the park.
Upon arriving home I looked for Diana, my wife, ready to ask her to drop everything she was doing and help me in the search for Dickens. All the lights were on in the house, and Diana was nowhere to be seen, although her purse was still hanging in its usual place; a clear sign that she ought to have been home.
I went into my room to grab a heavy jacket. Suddenly I heard Diana's voice coming from the kitchen door, and along with that voice, the familiar sound of four paws ambling across the kitchen floor. The next thing I knew, the cold, wet nose of my big, beautiful Sheltie was right up in my face.
To make a long story short, Dickens had made his way home, down a very busy street, across six lanes of an incredibly busy highway, along a route he had never traveled in his life.
Diana told me that one of our neighbors, who lives three doors down, had rung the doorbell and inquired whether we knew that our Collie was running loose in the alleyway behind the house. "We have a big Sheltie," she replied, "but he's out walking with my husband." Bemused, she went outside to see Dickens those few doors down, associating with the woman's Beagles. She called him over, and he came right to her, absolutely none the worse for wear.
It's been four hours now, as I write this, and I'm still quite overwrought.
