After enduring the indignity of having his first bath here, Ossi was damp, but generally happy to lay in front of a nice fire in the fireplace to dry off with "his people". The collar he came with was a heavy metal link collar that stained his fur so when we gave him a bath we took it off so he could truly be a naked dog (which he seemed to enjoy).
After drying off while napping in front of the fire (tough life, huh?) L-Dawg went to get the mail. Stupidly, I blocked the way to the front door with my body thinking I could just reach into the mailbox, grab the mail and poof! I'm back inside without Ossi even noticing. Yeah...notice I said, "STUPIDLY". He shoved my feet aside with his nose and took off runnin' and I mean running.
I threw on a pair of clogs and my jacket and started chasing him down the snowy street. Man, can this dog run. REALLY fast. He was three blocks away (toward the busy street) before I was even at the end of our lawn.
B-Dawg ran one way and I ran the other trying to keep up with a dog that A) we just adopted less than 48 hours ago and doesn't know his way home B) has no real obedience training that we know of and c) has no collar or tags. I realized there was no stinkin' way I was going to catch him because he can run much faster than I can period, but especially through inches of snow with my backless clogs filling up with said snow. I hopped in the car and starting driving very slowly around a six block radius with my windows open, hollering Ossi's name. Occasionally, I would see a yellow tail bouncing through the snow, but when I stopped, opened the door and tried to get him in the car or got out and tried to get him to come to me (or even get close to him) he'd take off running like a maniac. He thought we were playing the world's greatest game of "Come and Get Me"!!
Not only was I getting mad, I was freaking out because he was headed toward the very busy street four blocks away from our house. I saw him running in the lawns along the busy street, pulled into someone's driveway and got out of the car to try and get him. He ran out into the street, weaving in and out of cars coming his way, drivers on the road looking terrified that they were going to hit this little guy who thought all the cars were playing chase with him. A nice man and his little boy happened to be out shoveling their driveway and he said, "If you get him to run this way, we can get him cornered in our neighbor's backyard. They have a fence." So that's exactly what we did. It took us 15 minutes to get the little wiggler cornered behind the garage and by the fence. I tackled him, we put his collar and leash on and I carried him to the car, thanking the man and his little boy profusely for their help. Without them, Ossi would have been road pizza. In fact, they said they had a pretty little Brittany Spaniel who'd run out into the same busy road, had been hit and killed just six months ago.
Wow "Road Pizza", you really lucked out on this one.
Ironically, when he squeezed his way out the front door, we were literally five minutes away from leaving to get him a new collar at the pet store so we could put his ID tags on. It was scary but we realized how much we both love this dog already because we were both thinking, "What will we do if he gets hurt or killed or if he just disappears and we never see him again?"
So...it's off to obedience training next week (a week sooner than originally planned) because "someone" needs to learn sit, stay and come. And a good lesson as to why every dog should have a collar and ID tags on at all times!!!
Ossi resting after
his "big
adventure"
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