Around our house, Echo, our lab/pitt mix pup, is generally viewed as the "good dog", well by Kristi anyways. Some of that is his behaviors are caused by the fact he is still a puppy. Some of it is while he's not the brightest of dogs at times, is cute in a dopey sort of way. Today is an example of why.
Kristi took him out this morning. She is trying to train him to be off leash, so he had on the training collar. Normally, he'd do what he needed to and come in to go back to bed like any other Sunday. Except today there was another dog in the neighborhood. The black shepard mix obviously belongs to someone...he had a collar and tags. Apparently he left his owners at home . As he went through our yard, Echo decided to follow, trying to get him to play. And off they went. Out of the yard, down the street and away. One problem with an electric training collar...they have limited distance at which they are effective. (Though if it had been Jet, she wouldn't have even noticed being zapped, plus she would have tried to kick the other dog's butt for being in her yard - can you tell she's my dog?)
Kristi tried to catch him, but when that failed she came to wake me up to help. Have I ever mentioned, I don't wake up easily? Especially since you cannot shake me awake without risking getting punched? Once I was up, we both took our cars to see if we could spot the dogs anywhere in the area. We circled a couple of times, checked back at the house, got Tasha from next door looking, called the Animal Control folks, etc. At one point, I dropped the car back home and took to looking on foot, passing out business cards with my cell phone number on it to anyone who might come across the mutt.
This kept up for hours! I finally stopped to eat, took information on Echo to the police department, and took to looking again. Kristi finally flagged me down on one pass. Sitting happy as can be in the passenger seat was Echo. Apparently, he got lost a few streets up from us. Luckily for him, he is cute. Cute enough that someone let him into their house, gave him love and attention and shelter for most of the 4 plus hours he was missing. Kristi passed the house and saw him playing with his new human friend. As soon as she got out of the car, he ran over and jumped on her, all happy to have been found.
He was no worse the wear for his adventure. He didn't even have the decency to look ashamed of himself. I'm fairly certain he has no idea he did something wrong. He came home, ate and quickly laid down to take a nap. It seems adventures are very tiring. He and I had a talk about how he really isn't smart enough to be doing things like this. He is used to these conversations...they usually involve me reminding him it is a good thing he is cute, cause bright he isn't.
The one good thing out of all of this...other than we found the butthead? Jet, aka The Black Menace is officially the "good dog" of the house. Who would have ever thought that would happen?
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