We have this dog. He’s HUGE, hairy, nearly blind, stinky, gentle as can be, and quite wild and un-tamed. He sleeps on the top of a picnic table and covers the entire thing. He loves the kids dearly. He used to be a sheep dog, but now that all of our sheep have been butchered, he is just a big old backyard dog.
Since all of his sheeply comrades have one by one been stored in the freezer over the past fall, we think that the poor dog is a little worried about his fate – I mean, if you were a dog, wouldn’t you worry?
So yesterday we were working around the yard and Colonel saw his opportunity to shake loose the bonds of fencing that have kept him so, well, fenced in, and strike out on his own.
He has escaped once or twice before, and he generally comes back around when he realizes that he is hungry and that it is best for a near-sighted dog to have one’s food brought to him in a bowl, instead of having to hunt for dinner. In other words, we weren’t terribly worried. The girls, however went in to full on sack-cloth and ashes mode. Mourning, weeping, tearing out of hair… the whole nine yards.
I don’t think it was the fact that the dog went missing that was causing so much angst. No, it was more that there was an opportunity for drama.
Before we managed to recapture the humongous canine, Kinsley had worked herself into a full blown panic attack, complete with a terrible headache and chest pain and shortness of breath. So after Dan dragged 200 pounds of dog nearly a mile through the woods, up a ravine, and across the highway, loaded him into the back of the van, and unloaded him back into the backyard, we spent the rest of the evening plying Kinsley with Rescue Remedy
and aromatherapy to ease her back out of panic mode.
Sisters can sure manage to work themselves into the oddest frenzies.
Gentlewood Cottage 