The dogs take off!

From the tone of my last posts I hope you are understanding that the monsoon season here can be quite fickle. Seems as though several days are spent gathering the proper conditions, so we have many days of giant cloud build-up, wind, sheet lightning, vague thunder, etc., which don't coalesce into "actual rain" for some time. (This summer I'm calling it the monlate season....hahahaha....)

Last week on Wednesday I was headed to work for the evening shift of 4-8 p.m. It was overcast and ominous looking, but I knew it was one of those dry runs, so figured I'd leave the dogs out. My older dog, Sun Bear, was taught to be afraid of storm conditions by another dog we lived with for awhile, and she's gotten a little more weird about it every year since. She did not want to stay outside, but I forced the issue (never again!!). I bungeed the chainlink gate shut as the wind sometimes blows it open, and headed off.

After work I stopped by the grocery store, so it was 9 by the time I returned. Right away I noticed that the gate was still bungeed, but the latch was no longer around the bar, and there were no dogs in the yard. No dogs in the house. Alarm rising in my gut, I checked messages and yes, there was one from a woman who had the dogs, and who had found them about a mile from my house, wandering the streets. In traffic. Apparently it had started thundering about 20 minutes after I left the house, and Sun Bear had bolted, with Angus in tow.

Now Sun Bear wears her county tags but no other I.D. And Angus hadn't had his rabies shot yet--he got one yesterday, after the coyote attack--so he had nothing but a little nylon collar on. I can't tell you how scared and then how relieved I was that they had stayed together, stayed safe, and gotten lucky with a kind person who took them home with her!

Needless to say, I called her while driving to her house, but there was no answer. And the dogs were inside instead of in a yard where I could retrieve them. I rang her bell, and her 2 dogs ran to the door barking, and through the picture window I could see my 2 joining in the cacophony (that was for you, Lighty!!), along with a nicely shredded roll of paper towels--courtesy of Angus, I suppose. I had no choice but to leave them there while I returned home to put the groceries away, but I called and left many messages instructing her to call me, whenever she got home, to come pick them up.

I spent an hour or so knowing they were safe but missing them nevertheless, and when I got the call to come get them I was incredibly relieved. We had a long talk on the way home, the upshot of which was that I will never make Sun Bear stay outside if she's feeling nervous! I guess I learned my lesson!

The next day I went to PetSmart and now they both are sporting fine-looking ID tags with their names and my phone number engraved on them. Whew.

Meanwhile we had a Real Rain Storm last night--not a gully-washer, but a nice medium force thunderstorm. The riverbed is still dry, but I've switched from running shoes to Tevas in hopes of going wading sometime soon. And the vet discovered a couple of puncture wounds on Angus' neck, so I'm syringing them with H2O2 and he's on amoxicillin for 10 days. Lucky little guy!

I'm off to Ms. Magz this afternoon for fun and hard work, in the proper ratio of course. Wish me luck!

ciao for now....