Canine non grata

I’m at Wits End this weekend with the whole fam damily minus Tom, who had to work all weekend and so still has olfactory sensitivity…you’ll see why momentarily. My parents’ weekend home is lovely, tucked away in a little forest grove in Wisconsin, just far enough away to be away from it all and not so far that I dread the drive. There’s enough space for all of us to escape from each other when necessary and yet still room for us all to gather at one table for meals. We tend to only go up when my parents are there, as well as my brother-wife-nephew. It’s more fun that way.

Rounding out the crew is Rosie the Miss-Adventurous Mutt. Not so much fun, that one.

It really is lovely here, isn’t it?

 

However, it is not exactly spoiled suburban dog friendly. There may be a couple of acres here, but it’s all woods covered in ticks. Rosie’s flea and tick meds are up to date but I really don’t care to test the effectiveness with an extended romp in the scrub.

(OOH! I hear my sons yelling at my brother, “YOU MEEKROB!!!” Good times, good times).

So I walk her on a short leash and pray her early mornings (6:15 yesterday, 5:30 this morning) do not wake my two-year-old nephew, for then we are all awake and no amount of coffee can appropriately compensate for that early hour.

It finally got warm enough here today to open the deck doors (one of four decks, the house is built on a hill) and I let Miss Stinky out for a little nap in what sunlight could filter through the leaves. Time passed. I whistled for Rosie, thinking she was somewhere in the house, for I wanted to walk her before we headed off to the store. No dog inside. No dog on the porch. No dog.

The bitch had escaped.

 

Notice the baby gate on the stairs; that was not for my nephew but the dog. Did she shimmy under that rail and fly the six feet distance to the ground?

 

Or did she limbo under this rail and do a double backflip onto the grill?

 

Or perhaps she rolled under this rail and landed on the rocks five feet below.

My point being that somehow that spoiled suburban dog who is almost as wide as she is long managed to to squeak under a deck rail and land several feet down uninjured. Oh yes, I did find her. Sitting at the front door, ticked off that she had had to wait to long to be let back into the house.

And smelling like every dead thing in the forest ever and all those to come.

While at the store I got some sort of doggie deodorizer and now she smells like dead things with a hint of grapefruit. I have Febreezed the laundry room here where she sleeps and may need to burn her new doggie bed because I am NOT letting that smell into my house.

(As I type this, I hear OH MY GOD THE DOG GOT OUT!!! I am not making this up. She was quickly apprehended.)

Needless to say, this will be Rosie’s last trip to Wits End, for she is truly canine non grata right now.