Houdini, the Dog

Levi should be renamed Houdini. He managed to escape between the four inch slates on the white, plastic fencing while Mom sat reading the paper only eight feet away. She thought he'd gained too much weight to fit through them so he was in the dog yard without his retractable leash on. All that hair of his is deceptive.

He was gone five-six minutes after Mom noticed him missing and she went into a full panic attack. She did manage to grab the dog whistle and she alternated calling his name and blowing the whistle, forgetting to yell "come" as she'd been practicing with him in their mini training sessions. On her second pass through the back yard she found him chasing one of the robins he's been barking at since they came north. That boy is going to be a sissified ornithologist when he grows up. He came right to her and it was a good thing, too, because he was about to go up a hill too steep for Mom trail after him without having a heart attack in the process.

That afternoon Mom spent several hours putting plastic lattice work around the outside of her beloved white picket fence. Mom can fix anything with duck tape, bungee cords or electrical plastic ties. This job called for the ties and the leftover material that was used to enclose the bottom of the deck, keeping out the wild animals---well, sort of. The rabbits have chewed themselves many access points of entry and departure. But I digress. Mom only had a cheap hand saw that cut plastic so it took her a long time to accomplish the job. Levi is going to have to dig his way out next time.

Speaking of digging, Mom got the patio stones down over my grave but Levi likes to dig in the soft dirt around the edges, so mom is going buy more of them to stop his chances of getting to my bones. But he's going to keep digging around the edges of the new row of stones and she'll keep buying more stones and pretty soon he won't have anymore room to poop and pee. She told Dad she'll probably have to put bricks at the bottom of the fence when he figure out that he could dig his way to the backyard bird sanctuary. That boy even barks at the life-size polyresin owl who watches the house from the pine trees. ©