Dogs On the Run !

Well, let's just say it involved; a two and a half year old, three bags of groceries, and a squirrel across the street. They were off & running thru the subdivision without a backwards glance. By the time I was able to get in the beater & chase after them, with Acer yelling "Lobelia Car" helpfully from the back seat, they were gone. I couldn't even hear any neighborhood dogs barking at an invasion in their territory to try to locate them that way. This was at 10:30 in the morning, by the time we left at 3:20 there was still no sign of them. I left all the water bowls full, the gate open and the back door open enough for them to slip in. Rugby's collar has my cell phone on it, so I made sure Bill had it in case they were found, he could respond.

All night at work, I kept waiting for him to call, but he never did. So I drove home & opened up the car door et viola! there was Rugby, but no Lobelia in sight. I actually wasn't worried about Rugby, I knew he would come back, but Lobelia, I wasn't quite as sure about her. So Bill came downstairs and as we were celebrating Rugby's return and questioning Lobelia's continuing absense, in she walked through the open back door.

Yeah! us, we were back up to our normal number of dogs, except one stunk and was covered with burs. Poor Lobelia, you could tell she just wanted to lie there and recuperate after the obvious stresses of her day, but no, she gets tossed in the tub, shampooed and combed. Here she thought she smelt just fine, but her people are dousing her with watermelon scented shampoo.

So this morning they are laying around like they have the hangovers from #### and Rugby is having a hard time moving fast enough to get out of Acer's way. Lobelia has a cut on one of her from pads and is barely moving at all. I asked Rugby what he was thinking of, the last time he pulled something like this he was sore for days and that was four years ago, then he did more than 10 miles in two hours. 11 Hours on the road, evading animal control and running through the parks and sub divisions, who knows how far they went yesterday. For Rugby it was too far; he's 10 now and for a big dog, that's pretty dern old. Looks like they'll both be getting an aspirin a day for a little while, just to help them cope.