As with yesterday I spent quite a bit of time outside today. The days are getting shorter and colder as winter slowly creeps in. Sure, for the most part it’s still sunny most days here in Melbourne, but some of those sunny days are punching out their time clocks as rainy and overcast days punch in.

Now I didn’t plan to spend so much time outside. Forces beyond my immediate control compelled me. While I was busy on the computer earlier today I became aware of how quiet everything around me was…..a little TOO quiet I thought. No barking at the horses or the sound of pups snoring, scrabbling or furkeling about the place? I started to get a little concerned.

I quickly looked about the house and found Goldie – the neighbor’s dog – sleeping peacefully out on the front couch. He likes it there because he knows that the kitchen is in the immediate vicinity and he can keep a watchful eye over everything that may or may not happen there. Gus, however, was absent. That is until I opened the front door to call for him.

Now I should say that Gus is not a bright dog. He’s cute and beautiful, yes, but not too smart when it gets down to it. That’s OK. He’s a dog…..and you don’t want dogs to get TOO smart now, do you? For about six years the fence that separates the back yard from the rest of the property has held Gus at bay with nary a thought by him as to wonder “Mmmmm, how would I get out of here if I wanted to?” Observing Goldie go about his business CRAWLING UNDER various parts of the fence – no fence would stop that dog – held no ideas to Gus that he could do the same. In fact Gus could EASILY jump the fence (which is only about 4 foot high) if he so desired. Hell, he could probably STEP over it – his legs being so long. But no. He never tried. He never even had the inkling.

That was until Christmas 2003! Amy and I were spending three wonderful months in the States and my brother and his daughter were staying at our house. During that time Gus learned to escape the confines of the back yard – mainly by squeezing his very thin and athletic body between the gate and the fence post!

When Amy and I got home it was open slather! Gus seemed to be able to come and go as he pleased – which of course didn’t please us one bit! Not at all in fact. Amy and I busied ourselves blocking off every crawl space and escape route we could find….But still Gus continually got out, due mainly to the fact that we never realized just how he did it. That is until we actually SAW him squeeze through!

Now the quick fix for that, we found, was to “park” the wheelbarrow right in front of the fence – thus blocking access. That seemed to fix things up. After all Gus was NOT a Houdini pup and could not navigate his way through a whole maze of obstacles. Sure it hampered easy access for ourselves as well, but we didn’t really use that gate a hell of a lot anyway so it didn’t bother us.

So what happened today? Well, Gus found another hole in the security. Another crawl space. For some reason there must have been something more interesting on the other side of the fence and so Gus thought he’d check it out. I’d like to add that the security breach has since been fixed and the whole perimeter of “Stalag Wonga” checked for further breaches. Tomorrow we’ll spend a bit more time making sure that the incidences of escape are made just that little bit more difficult. After all we don’t want any “Hogan’s Pup Heroes” here, thank you!

The pups won’t mind the extra time spent outside as long as there’s sticks, rocks, tennis balls and basketballs involved – and there’s SURE to be plenty of that!

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 29th, 2005 at 7:37 pm and is filed under Home, Pets. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.