A Nose for Trouble
Posted on January 31, 2015 by bob in OffTheBeatenPath
I got the call an hour into our trip. My youngest pup – hardly a pup any longer at nearly four years – was casually roaming the neighborhood in that worry-free way only dogs who know their owners won’t be back for a few days can manage.
“Do you have a dog named Bella?” the voice on the phone asked.
I did indeed, but she never left the yard without me. Knowing Coco’s penchant for escape and my own thrifty tendency to reuse dog collars, I described my younger dog to the caller. It was a positive ID. A call to my father-in-law, who was in town and down the street, placed Coco back into our yard and our trip back on schedule.
Except it didn’t. The trip went well but unbeknownst to me until arrival back home, four more times that weekend Coco scaled the six-foot privacy fence. Thanks to my gracious father-in-law and understanding neighbors, what was certainly an inconvenience for all of them wound up being only a minor issue.
As we drove, my wife and I discussed Coco’s nose for both birds and trouble, possessing an uncanny ability to find each in places neither clearly resides. While we were thankful to have her back in the yard and appreciative she hadn’t ended our family vacation early, we knew from past experience most “fixes” with Coco were only temporary solutions.
Coco was nothing if she wasn’t predictable. A creature of habit, once a new form of entertainment – be it sneaking off to chew duck decoys one by one or repeatedly scaling a newly-discovered low spot in the fence – the first shot was always but a taste of the volley to come. On more than one occasion, I’d look out into the yard to see contents of the playhouse we used as a makeshift store room strewn about the lawn. The entrance was blocked, but she somehow always found her way inside.
For a week straight a year ago, our chickens lived in constant terror when Coco found a foothold in the ornamental spacing of the brick wall separating our courtyard and garden where the hens resided. I’d hear them screeching frantically and walk out back to find all of them fighting for the limited real estate of the coop’s roof while Coco stood rigid, pointing the “covey” of hens.
It was laughable until she claimed one kill and another serious maiming, after which I watched Coco like a hawk. She must have known it too, playing it cool until she saw the split in blinds disappear. When I finally caught her in the act, I locked her in her crate, went straight to the store, bought an invisible fence collar and kit and spent the next two hours installing it in the dark. After a few eye-opening zaps, Coco dared not go near the brick wall, and the chickens were safe once again.
Before long, she found a low spot in the chain link fence between us and one of our neighbors. Though none of us save Coco knew of it, there was a limb that had fallen against the fence and nearly parallel to the ground, roughly half the distance to the fence top. I’d step out the back door to take out the trash and find Coco on the wrong side of our fence!
When I finally caught her mid-escape, I watched intently as she used the limb as a step to spring over into the neighbor’s yard. She then crawled under their fence and ran back around our house to the back door. For fun, I put her back in our yard to see how long it would take to repeat. In two minutes, there was the tap-tap-tap of a dog’s tail at our back door. Out came the spool of invisible fence wire and the trenching shovel, making fully two sides of our back yard Coco-proof.
But none of it should’ve surprised me. Because she loves the water so, we’d taught her as a pup to climb swimming pool ladders on the off chance that if she fell in and no one was around, she could climb out. It was a cool trick, albeit one that came with unforeseen complications. To date, she’s climbed ladders of every variety, fences of wood, metal and stone, and has scaled trees after birds, possums, squirrels and pears until there are no more limbs within reach.
When we arrived home from our trip, I made a beeline for the invisible fencing kit and once again spent several headlamp-illuminated hours burying wire in hopes of keeping Coco contained. With this latest run, three-fourths of our back yard is now Coco proof. Since then however, I’ve noticed her eyeing the only remaining invisible fence-free portion of our property. If I were a betting man, that stretch would be the odds-on favorite for our Houdini hound’s next escape. I’ll keep the headlamp ready.
Niko Corley, a licensed charter boat captain, spends as much of his free time as possible on the water or in the woods. He can be reached at niko.corley@gmail.com.
