Molly's Walk-Abouts

It was bound to happen and it did. After almost a year and a half, Molly finally figured out that there is unfettered access between her back yard playground and the front yard of freedom [she’s a blonde]. That there is nothing but her good behavior keeping her from hiking down the driveway and not looking back til she gets her fill of other dogs’ poop. That’s right..she spent 18 well-behaved months tooling around the back yard without ever exploring what lay on the other end of that driveway. Okay, okay, there was that one time she ran around to the front yard & got maced by the postman, but otherwise, she’s never even TRIED it. [Maybe THAT’s been the deterrent all this time?]

Whatever it was, the deterrent has expired – because Molly has recently taken to wee walk-abouts in the neighborhood. The first time she went out for a self-guided walk, she went unnoticed until the phone rang…"Ummm…hi…I have a white dog here with your number on her collar.” Da wha? You mean Molly isn’t in the back yard? [Mother of the year.] The second time we noticed she was gone, we found her collar in the living room while she was out-and-about naked as a jaybird. We spent 20 panicked minutes looking for her before we found her in front of the shitzou-owning neighbor’s big picture window. “Hey neighbor…sorry about your dog scratching the hell out of your window. Our dog doesn’t normally taunt like that.” [Lie]

Rita and I have begun spending part of every day frantically calling out to one another “Have you seen Molly? Where’s Molly? Do you have Molly??” [It’s a good thing her street in California doesn’t have as much traffic as Woodlawn Dr …she’d be a Molly pancake by now. This dog has NOT figured out that in dog vs. car….car wins.]

Which means it’s time for more yard art on Hilldale Road with our very own driveway fence:

[All my crap is keeping Rita from being able to park in the garage anyway…so what the heck.] We could have tried the electronic fence again [see post: http://savemethecall.blogspot.com/2008/11/invisible-fence-part-deux.html, ] but quite frankly, my nerves couldn’t take it. This is probably not the landscaping Rita imagined when she bought the house a couple of years ago, but that precious little white dog is sooooooo worth it, right honey??? Besides, the way I look at it is that it doesn’t keep Molly IN the yard as much as it keeps the skunk OUT of the yard. [Oh dear god, I hope.]

And that baby is secured! We were pretty doggone proud of the job we did bolting that thing into place…until the yard man arrived with his mower to do the back yard, that is.