Flying Poodles

In Which Miss Elinor Makes Sure I NEVER Let Her Off-Leash Again

We had a windstorm last night. The first of the 2007-2008 rainy season. Wind and rain and all that good stuff. A few very brief power failures, although I gather that some areas are still out. Not us, thankfully. I am NOT a nice person when the power goes out.

Last night, Jay and I went out to dinner. Sushi, very nice. When we got back, I took the curly girlies out to the side yard to empty them. It’s fenced. Now, Elly has been under the fence a few times, but we’ve reinforced it, added barriers, etc. I thought it was safe.

It was dark out, 9 PM, raining. Raining slightly sideways. Dancer trotted off into the darkness, tags jingling, and came back to me in short order. I called for Elly to come in. Silence, not even the jingle of her tags, just the sound of rain. Not soft rain. Real rain.

I took Dancer inside, and came back out to find Elly, with the flashlight in hand. I use an underwater dive light that no longer works reliably underwater as my outside flashlight. It’s VERY bright. No sign of Elly in the yard, no noise of jingling tags. Just rain. I go back in and tell Jay (whose back is hurting) that Elly has taken off again. I go back out and start listening for her tags. I spotlight Elly at the far side of the catchment ponds in front of our house, but she takes off–I wish she’d run like that at trials!–when she sees me take a step towards her. She heads up past our nearest neighbor’s house, through another set of catchment ponds, towards the next street, towards the woods that go on and on.

(I should mention that her head was down the whole time–she was tracking SOMETHING that really interested her. I had visions of a coyote or bobcat along that trail, and their territories are huge.)

Jay comes out to help me. She takes off in the other direction, circling behind us, through the other neighbor’s front yard, over the fence and into their back yard. What a relief: there’s only one good way out of that yard, and it’s possible to almost completely block it. I left Jay in the middle of the exit route and started to try to circle around her. She sees me, takes off behind neighbor’s house… and ends up staring at Jay, who manages to get a good grip on her collar.

She was soaking wet, ecstatic with the joy of tracking, and enormously frustrated that we wouldn’t let her go back out and finish the job. Even this morning, she was anxious to be let off leash so she could go after it again.

My neighbor told me this morning that there’s a mountain badger who’s made a home in the far end of her yard. I assume that’s what Elly was tracking so frantically. Big animal, big scent. Fortunately, small territory! And this morning, I found several half-eaten apples under our apple tree.