Stupid dog

Posted on December 19, 2008
Filed Under General |

Following a winter storm that closed down most of Michigan, Lance once again astounded me by doing the stupidest thing I could never imagine him doing.

So I have a deck on the back of my house. There is no real way to get under it. The dirt is packed with concrete blocks to discourage digging and there is no more than about a 2” clearance under any of the support beams.

Attached to the deck and running across the yard I have a line with a tie out so I can let Lance run in the yard without worrying about him running off. There’s only about 7 feet of cable that he can deviate to the side of the run line.

Tonight I let the dogs out as usual. They had been very interested in one corner of the deck; I assumed they found a hibernating mouse or the like in the pile of leaves there. Anyway, I’m sitting at my computer and about 10 minutes later I hear Lance’s usual “I’m stuck!” yipping from outside. Assuming that he, as usual, got wrapped around the post at the end of the line (he does it at least once a day), I put on some shoes and head out to rescue him. I see his line near the house, around the side of the porch. A bit more investigation shows that he is actually under the porch. I try calling him and pulling on the lead, to no avail. He’s stuck. I get my roommate and a shovel, and head back outside. Mind you it’s nearly 9pm and pitch black, maybe 15 degrees out. Everything is covered with snow and ice.

I get outside first, in my only winter wear: a white coat and leather gloves. Perfect for lying on the ground and playing in dirt. I start digging using the only shovel I’ve got: one caked with cement from a project of the previous owner that wasn’t properly cleaned up after. I hit cement brick after brick, pulling them out of the frozen earth one at a time. By this point, my roommate has come out side with the only light source he could find, his cell phone. I get about a foot and a half in and we’re lying on the ground to see what is captured in the photo below. Lance crawled under not one but 2 beams, neither with more than a 2” clearance. How he did it is still beyond me. The white line in the photo is the cable he was attached to.

So we’re lying on the ground, digging by hand at this point because it’s hard to shovel frozen cement blocks with no leverage. After about 10-15 minutes of digging, there’s only a little loose dirt in the way, so I start pulling the lead and calling, “Lance, come!” After 3 or 4 calls, he digs away what little is left and squeezes through. Good boy! We stand up and start collecting tools and I look down to see Lance trying to crawl BACK UNDER THE DECK. Stupid dog. I drag him inside. The leash clasp is packed with frozen dirt, I’m covered in frozen dirt, struggling to free him, and my roommate went straight to the bathroom to wash up (he didn’t have gloves). We decided to leave the hole, because I would like to give whatever the heck is under the deck a chance to come out so this doesn’t become a daily occurrence.

Once again, I maintain that I own the stupidest dog in the world. If you would like more proof, I will gladly tell the stories of him jumping out of my car in the middle of the busiest intersection of MSU’s campus during homecoming, eating the tops off strawberries, playing with a nest of yellow jackets, needing 6 months of constant training to learn “sit,” digging holes in my brand new bedding, chewing flip-flops, sunglasses, all Brian’s D&D pencils that were on the dining room table, underwear, his brush, and whatever else he can get his mouth around, the time he climbed on the table and finished off dinner, playing tug with Brian’s underwear, getting so covered in sticker burrs that he turned green, chewing open a plastic container of plant fertilizer, nearly neutering himself again while jumping up onto a ramp and Grandpa’s house, and many other fascinating tales that I’m sure I will remember as soon as I post this. It’s a good thing he’s cute, or I’d have taken someone up on an offer to take him off my hands.

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