Ginger..aka "Houdini"

Well, we have two dogs, but Ginger (left) is the one who gives us the most trouble. She's almost always sweet and cuddly, but she has an adventurous streak in her, and doesn't like to stay in the yard. No...she doesn't dig out. She's much more creative than that. When we lived in Kentucky, she used to just plain JUMP our four-foot fence. We were often surprised to find her on the front porch, on the neighbor's front porch, under the carport as we pulled up, or in the neighbor's yard.

Naturally we were excited to move into a place with an eight-foot fence, thinking we might not be worried about her all the time. But, soon after we moved in, we began having neighbors knock on our door, with Ginger happily wiggling under their arm or at their feet, who would inform us that she had been locked in their garage, or had been "roaming" the street in front of our house. We were bewildered, and usually would find some small hole between the gate and the fence, but sometimes, there would be no explanation at all.

The good thing about Ginger is that she always goes straight to people. She's been to garage sales, on walks, to cook-outs, etc. She never just takes off down the highway. We've always had reasonable confidence that sooner or later she'd be returned by that new, exciting person she'd been dying to meet.

So once again this week, she disappeared. It was her most impressive feat yet. But, you think, how could it be more impressive than jumping a four-foot fence? Well....one evening this week, we noticed that her face was roughed up in a few places. She was missing some fur, and had some red spots around her snout. We thought maybe she'd been attempting an escape, but we were happy to see she'd failed, since she was still in the yard. The next day, Troy was mowing the lawn and found that there was a broken slat in our gate...not the bottom, or the top, just a hole right out of the middle. We're pretty sure the face injury had come from trying to jump through this hole, about two feet off the ground (and only about 4 inches wide). So, Troy nailed a board onto the back of the gate to keep her in for the time being. But, the next day when he called them inside at 11:30 for the night, she was nowhere to be found. He went out and saw that the HALF of the new board was missing. I don't know what she did, since the hole was two feet off the ground and she's only about 8 inches tall. But, she did away with half of the board, and managed to wedge her round little self through the slit that was, in the end, only about three inches wide...I would've loved to see that process.

So she was gone, and we went to bed after driving once around the neighborhood. The next day, in usual form, she was returned by our neighbor who said he had found her in his garage as he was leaving for work (I don't know why she insists on getting out just to spend the night in someone's garage). So she's back, but we assume, not for long!