When She Was Good……….

Yesterday Daphne, Phoebe, and I drove through beautiful south east TN to Blue Ridge, Georgia where we met Bobbi, Joe , Bruce, and Ellie and Tiny for breakfast and a 5.8 mile hike in the dog friendly mountains of north Georgia. Ellie and Bobbi are taking a dog training class, so Bobbi was full of wisdom regarding dog-think. After a bit of early walk shenanigans, I got Phoebe to more or less heel the entire hike. Ellie never did take to the idea. I believe her view was “I’ve been pulling Mom for eight years, surely this is the way things should be. Why would I want to walk behind her.” I did take advantage of my hounds pulling power during a long climb towards the end of the hike. I felt like a dog musher, just sailing up the mountain behind my two locomotives.

Bobbi was so impressed by Phoebe’s excellent behaviour, especially since our first hike together, in December, was cut short because I was exhausted trying to control Phoebe as well as Daphne. I, though, remembered, our big story this week, and recited Bobbi a rhyme from childhood:

There was a little girl
Who had a little curl
Right in the middle of her forehead.
And when she was good,
She was very, very good
But when she was bad,
She was horrid.

Phoebe, a nine month old hound mix, has the wandering gene. Last month she escaped and was gone exactly one week before showing back up as if nothing were amiss. Happy, healthy, just the same Pheobe whose tail I had last seen a week previously running towards the far corner of the yard. After three weeks of lock down, she again escaped when I wasn’t careful enough about getting her in the door. She made a 180 degree turn out of my hand and bolted, again for the far corner.

My emotional state was better on this second Phoebe vacation. I adopted a “Que sera.” If she doesn’t want to live with me, she’ll have to find her own way. Daphne and I reverted to the pre-Phoebe life. A little quieter, emptier, but a good life.

Friday morning Daphne and I were in the living room when she started making a whining fuss. I opened the door to let her out and heard a dog crying in the distance. Daphne was quite concerned about it. I let Daphne free so she could follow the sound. I tracked behind her on the street. Daphne led me to a place where, when I looked up, I saw a shed building on the ridge, and a brown hound crying on the roof. Phoebe….. On a roof…..

A fence blocked my path, so I walked back to my house, picked up a leash, and then walked down the other street to approach the storage sheds on the back of the neighbor’s property. Phoebe was on a second story roof, but the shed had a single story area. I walked around the building, trying to find a way to get her. I also walked into the building (no doors, just lots of JUNK). I could see how she probably got on the roof. There were stacks of ummm stuff, that made a precarious ladder (certainly nothing I would climb, and apparently nothing Phoebe was willing to descend). Above the stacks there was a hole in the roof. Phoebe looked down at me through the hole, and cried some more.

I developed a plan. A tree grew beside the single story part of the building, and there were lots of tires lying around. I stacked three tires on rims next to the tree, and lay a couple rimless tires next to my pile. I hauled myself up the tires and leaned against the tree for balance. The roof hit me at mid chest. I reached up my arms and lured Phoebe to within grabbing range. It actually took her several attempts to get to me. She was afraid of the slope of the roof.

When I got a paw, I started sliding her to me. There was a good three inches of tree litter on the roof, and all of that slid with Phoebe, drowning me in dirt, leaves, and twigs. After a few seconds of firm pulling, resisted mightily by a frantic Phoebe, she slid enough that I could grab her shoulders and swing her off the roof to drop in the waiting tires. She bounced off the tires and galloped around ecstatically to celebrate with Daphne her release from the roof.