Gracie got out of our yard last week. I’d tell you how many times she’s done this, but I have honestly lost track. She doesn’t need a rock hammer, or a pinup poster. She doesn’t even need to spit the extra dirt out of her mouth on walks. She always finds a way to dig herself out of the yard Shawshank-style.<\/p>\n
This time? She upped the ante. She dug her way into our neighbor’s yard. But, it’s fenced in. So, she dug a tunnel from his yard to the yard next to his. According to him, the second hole appeared about a week earlier and slowly got bigger over time. Which means that Gracie was planning this escape long-term.<\/p>\n
Lord help us if this dog ever decides that she doesn’t like us anymore. She is way too smart for her own good.<\/p>\n
I am embarrassed to admit, I didn’t even realize she was gone. I remember letting her out back for one last evening constitutional. I remember realizing that the back door was open. I remember yelling out to her that it was time to come in. But she wasn’t out back, so I assumed I’d let her back in already and that I simply forgot to close the door.<\/p>\n
Except, you know, I hadn’t let her back in. She was already running around the neighborhood by then. I was just too sleep-deprived to notice.<\/p>\n
Have I mentioned that this all happened the night before Kristian got back from a week-long business trip? Because that partially explains why I was so zonked I didn’t realize that the dog had run off. Kristian got home around midnight and immediately noticed that she was gone. Because, unlike me, he’s not<\/em> an asshole. Which is why he set out to try and find her. While I held down the fort. AKA went back to sleep.<\/p>\n What? Someone<\/em> had to stay home with the sleeping baby. Nobody said that someone had to be awake.<\/p>\n Did I mention that she lost her tags a week earlier and we were still waiting for the replacements to arrive? Because that definitely happened. And they totally showed up the day after we got her back. Because, timing.<\/p>\n Long story short, Kristian didn’t find Gracie that night. She ran a couple of miles away, and (after a few hours) a nice lady found her and brought her inside. The nice lady put a picture on Facebook asking if anyone knew the nice doggie. The picture made the rounds locally, and a woman who used to dog-sit for us saw it. She put Kristian in touch with Gracie’s rescuer and we were all reunited later that day.<\/p>\n Phew!<\/p>\n So, now we have to do some extra husky-proofing of the backyard. Which, clearly, is going to be no small feat. Any suggestions? One of the women at our vet’s office suggested burying some sheet metal just below the fence to keep Gracie from digging (she also mentioned that electric collars don’t usually work on huskies because their coats are too thick).<\/p>\n Gracie got 4+ miles worth of walks that day (3.5 miles around a local lake plus another mile around our neighborhood). So, I don’t think it’s a burning need to stretch her legs. She probably just wants to go exploring.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Gracie got out of our yard last week. I’d tell you how many times she’s done this, but I have honestly lost track. She doesn’t need a rock hammer, or…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[30,34,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3737","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gracie","category-kristian","category-random"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5yggS-Yh","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3737","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3737"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3737\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3739,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3737\/revisions\/3739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}