So you already know I'm one of those horrible people who has an invisible fence for my dogs. Yes, I admit it -- I consciously decided to let them receive a hideous, albeit low-level, electrical shock once during the two weeks of training required to acclimate them to the idea of staying in the yard as opposed to indulging themselves in a transformation to street salsa.
You can probably wait until after you've read this to report me to the authorities.
One morning last week, I let the boyz, Cowboy Calvin and the Opie the X-Dog, outside while I got ready to go work out. When I opened the door a short time later, only the Cowboy trotted back in. He seemed fine with it.
Then again, he's never gotten over wanting to be an only child. What prompted us to get the invisible torture device in the first place was his manipulation of our Irish Wolfhound years ago. His repeated reinactments of the scene where the woodsman took Hansel and Gretel deep into the woods to lose them got old. Again and again he'd lead Dugan into the woods behind our house and beat it back to the house by himself, wearing an oh-so innocent expression on his fuzzy-mutt mug. Who me? he unflinchingly conveyed.
But this time it couldn't have been Calvin's conniving. After all, we'd installed the chamber of horrors to prevent it.
So I called Opie. And I called and called and called, peppering my entreaties with promises that Daddy was home and I had treats -- the two things in life he is nearly powerless to resist. But he resisted. So I knew something out of the ordinary had happened, and I initiated emergency dog-finding protocol. I slogged through the dew-covered grasses in the pasture to make sure Opie wasn't up to his shoulders in a groundhog hole, I walked the periphery of the property... TWICE, and I got down on the soggy ground to check under the deck to make sure he wasn't under there playing a chipmunk to death.
(And yes, I did go back into the house and make sure I hadn't closed him in a closet. Geez. How'd you know about that? That's the first place I look... now.)
Damp and desperate, I went to the back of the property again and called him. And, from way back in the woods, WAY outside the invisible fence, I heard a high-pitched, piercing terrier bark, which, at times like this, I find especially grating. So into the underbrush I plunged, heedless of my own personal presentable readiness to go work out next to some elliptical-grinding, every-hair-in-place, color-coordinated professional power babe at Health Point.
Suffice it to say that after one trip into the woods poorly prepared and sans leash, followed by another equipped with leash, polished persuasive techniques AND milk bones, I was able to wrest the boy from the lure of returning the wild (which I may actually regret), and bring him safely home.
After that, I checked the power box of our ferocious fence and saw that the light was on, indicating it was in working order. So I called the company to ask what was up and was politely told that our battery replacement contract (for the nasty noose collars) had run out THREE MONTHS AGO.
That could be it.
Zap. I was correctively shocked. Apparently, like the oil in my car, these things aren't self-perpetuating. They have to be replaced once in a while. Imagine that.
Covered in clammy sweat and burrs, I didn't end up working out that day. I already felt fully put through the ringer and sucked of at least 500 calories anyway. I guess that was the bright side. And in more good news, our dogs' strangle devices have fresh new batteries now, so no more escape attempts for a while.
But rest assured -- stories of the X-Dog's escapades will continue. The boy still has what it takes to send me over the edge and right to the keyboard.
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