Escape Artist

We got our dog "Maddie" labor day weekend of 2002. She is 6 years old as of July 17 and has been a huge part of our family. Last summer she got regulated to the back yard as an outside dog...due to getting sprayed by a few too many skunks in early morning escapades at my parents house. It was so nice not having the dog hair and allergies she brought inside that she stayed there after the skunk smell wore off. Even though she's been an inside dog most of her life, she has still spent a significant amount of time outside. She's never gotten out of our yard and gone anywhere...except the front porch. As a puppy, she went under the gate of our fence and we would always (always being twice) find her at the front door waiting for us.

Well, apparently she has decided that she no longer wants to be an outside dog without full freedom...2 Sunday mornings ago, Logan ran into our bedroom crying his little eyes out saying that he couldn't find Maddie. I told him that she was just around the side of the house and to go look again. He was emphatic that he'd already been over there and she wasn't there. Jarrod hopped out of bed and sure enough...she was no where to be found. Well, we kind of hit a panic mode at that point because she still had her old tags with our old phone number. Jarrod called our old number and sure enough someone had called it, but the people did not get a phone number for who had called. We were just thankful to know that she was okay and somewhere close by. Jarrod spent Sunday afternoon looking for her with no luck, but on Monday morning at 6:45 someone rang the doorbell and said that she was out running. We got her back in the yard and promptly put her new tags on. Logan comes back into our room on Thursday morning joyfully announcing that we need to yet again go look for Maddie. Thankfully, she had gone to the same house, the people called our correct number and Jarrod went to get her that afternoon. Well....we thought that would surely be the end of this romping through the neighborhood...until last night at 11:45 the doorbell rings and a police officer is standing there asking Jarrod if he's missing a dog. Apparently she had once again gotten out and was at the neighbor of her "new family's" home...they were apparently not dog people, were scared to death of our "vicious" dog and called the police. Their neighbor (her dream owners) came out, called Maddie and once again put her in their garage. We've filled in the holes, but lets face it, she's a lab that knows how to dig a hole, so hopefully she's learned her lessons, otherwise, she'll have to be an outside dog that gets kennelled every night.

Logan took these, so I had to post more than one of them...didn't he do a great job??