Theresa Lewis

The adventures of Misty and Sasha continues

 

One day, my husband and I went to visit my sister in Ottawa. She told us to bring our dogs with us because she had a large fenced in yard from when she used to have a dog. She had a really nice home with a gambrel roof. She lived in a quiet family neighbourhood that had lots of space between the houses and huge back yards.

It was a lovely day outside. My husband and I were having tea with my sister when her husband came in and asked my husband to move his car because he wanted to take his own car out of the garage. My husband’s car was blocking the garage door. I looked out the dining room window and saw my puppies playing in the yard. They were chasing each other through the trees. It made me smile to see them free and happy.

Seconds later, I saw Sasha walk by the dining room window. It didn’t register at first, but then I realized that she was walking along the edge of the roof. How could she have done that? I ran outside and saw that Misty was not in the back yard either where she had been only moments before.

My sister had a small balcony in the back of her house, but the roof lip ran in the opposite direction around the side of the house. I had to lean over the railing to see where Sasha was. I tried to call her back, but she totally ignored me. That’s when I saw Misty running down the street towards where my husband was parking his car in the shade. How did she escape from the yard? I was completely mystified. The gate was still closed and locked.

When my husband got out of the car and saw Misty, he was annoyed with me because he thought I had let her out of the yard. I told him that I hadn’t let her out and that she must have jumped the fence when she saw his car drive down the road. My brother-in-law said that she could not have jumped the fence because it was eight feet high. We couldn’t figure out how Sasha got herself up on the roof either. We had a dickens of a time getting her off the roof. She was scared and wouldn’t obey commands. Finally, my husband got a ladder and carried her down from the roof.

Misty was the biggest puzzle to us. How did she get out? I knew it had something to do with the dogs hearing the sound of my husband’s car and they probably thought we were leaving without them. We put both dogs back in the yard and watched to see how they tried to escape from it when my husband started up the car. All around the yard the chain link fence came right down to ground level except where the gate was. There was about a four inch clearance under the gate. As soon as the dogs heard the car again, Misty lay flat on her belly and slowly slid under the gate. I never would have thought it was possible for her to flatten herself down to just over three inches, but she did it. I would have thought that even if she managed to get her head under the gate, the expanse of her rib cage would have prevented her from going any further, but it didn’t.

Sasha on the other hand jumped up on a small table near the clothesline and walked along the four inch wide railing until she got to the lip of the gambrel roof. If we hadn’t seen it for ourselves, we wouldn’t have believed any of it. Once again, we learned to never underestimate the ingenuity of a determined dog.

My sister laughed and told us that her dog lived in that yard for twelve years and had never once escaped.

The End

Watch for more adventures of Misty and Sasha coming soon