One winter years ago, I had stepped out onto my front porch to sweep away snow when I spotted an unusual sight—two very large basset hounds, standing in the middle of my street. I called to them, they looked up, saw me, and (I swear) heaved a collective sigh of relief, as if to say, “Finally!”
I think they were very glad to see a friendly human. They trotted up the shoveled path to my house and joined me on the porch. They looked healthy, well-nourished, and very confused. They both wore collars and identification tags. I brought them inside to warm up and called the number on the tags.
Their family was overjoyed that they had been found. It had been one of the snowiest winters on record where I live, and these two doggy home-bodies had simply walked out of their fenced yard . . . over a bridge of deep, well-packed snow that led across the top of the sturdy four-foot-high structure that had, until that day, contained them safely all their lives!
They had never been on their own outside before, and even a familiar neighborhood looks different—to humans and animals alike—under that many feet of snow. They had gone walkabout so unintentionally that all they really wanted to do was to find their way back home.
A similarly surprising incident took place not long ago with one of my own dogs—the youngest, the biggest, and the most adventurous. He had been a stray before I adopted him, a street dog accustomed to fending for himself. (He ate cigarette butts!) He’s lived with us for years now and even though he has tried digging a hole just inside the gate to the back yard, he’s never made any real attempt at escape. He appears to like it here.
I was in my kitchen, looking out the window at a visiting friend throwing a tennis ball for my oldest dog, an inveterate retriever. Suddenly I realized that my other dog, the big brown beast, was nowhere to be seen. That was not particularly surprising—the dogs have access to a narrow walkway around my small garage in the back corner of the lot. The brown dog ran around the back of the garage so often that we called it his secret hideout. I figured that was probably where he was that morning.
Until I saw him peeing on a tree in my neighbor’s back yard!
Did I yell? I did. I yelled his name and he looked up, then continued to the next tree in the yard. I asked—okay, demanded—that my friend immediately struggle through the snow clumps behind the garage to see if he could find out how the heck my dog had gotten into the neighbor’s yard!
Very simple. A week before, we’d had a horrible storm. Winds only a few miles per hour short of a tornado downed trees with such ferocity that our power was not restored for six days. (Some homes waited even longer, including many who were without power on Thanksgiving Day.) I’d seen no major damage around my house, thank goodness, beyond littered tree limbs and some boards askew in another neighbor’s sketchy fence. Nothing to compare to what many nearby residents experienced, for sure.
But back behind the garage, where I couldn’t see, damage had occurred. At the corner of my lot, one neighbor’s wood fence was laid down flat, intact, and that weight had fallen onto one end of a chain-link fence belonging to the neighbor directly behind me . . . in whose yard my dog was now peeing!
It wasn’t a big gap, where the fences folded down together, but it was big enough for my brown beast to walk over. And who could blame him? After years of being barred by a fence, he at last had access to the enticing back yard of a dog and a human friend. (He and my other dogs have always gotten along well with my neighbor and her bulldog—through the fence.) Now, of course, there were so many new trees to pee on, even if the neighboring dog and her human were not outside.
I called and called. Eventually my big brown dog, having finally emptied his bladder leaving pee-mail for his doggy buddy, found his way back to the hole he’d escaped through, where my friend was waiting to encourage him to return. When my dog was safely back in his own yard—and I was feeding him large numbers of cookies for coming when he was called (finally!)—my friend blocked the hole with a garbage can. My dog has not left the yard since. In the spring, when the fences are repaired, I will check to be absolutely certain my dog isn’t able to get out there again.
In that same back yard, long before I had any of my own, I once found a loose ferret. Actually, the four dogs I had at the time, golden retrievers, found the little guy hiding under my back porch. He was scared, of course, but obviously domesticated. The proof of that came when I put him in a small crate and he immediately pooped in a corner of it. (That’s what pet ferrets do, if you’re lucky—poop in plastic litter boxes in corners.) I’ll never know how he came to be loose in my neighborhood, but I’m sure it wasn’t because someone let him out on purpose! Animal control ended up taking him to a ferret shelter.
One icy Christmas Eve, I joined my dinner guests in rounding up a pet rabbit that my neighbors had accidentally let out their front door. It was a dark and chilly night. Good thing for the rabbit that it was light-colored! The neighbors had little luck, but my friends and I—all of us dog trainers—managed to apply our experience to herding bunnies and that lucky rabbit was home safely soon.
It happens. A pet gets out a door, or a window, or a car. In that single second, his life and yours turn around. If you don’t see him escape, you don’t know he got out, you can’t tell which way he went, or you don’t even notice that he’s gone. And even if you do see him get out, you might chase him and not be able to catch him. It’s a scary scenario and one that most pet owners will experience, no matter how careful they are.
Next week, some suggestions on what to do if your pet is lost.
