So Hamlet met the neighbors today!
And by “met the neighbors,” I mean “I got a call from an unknown number about 11:00 this morning, saying, ‘Hi, you don’t know me but I got your number from Joyce. I’m one of your new neighbors, and there’s a puppy roaming the neighborhood--big and black with tan markings. Do you think he’s yours?’“
It turns out she was a very nice woman with two or three young kids (they were in the SUV when I got there, so I only saw silhouettes of bouncing heads), and she’d managed to coax him into her backyard and fenced him in. I rushed home from work, as soon as I hopped out of the car Hamlet just about pulled the leash out of her hand running towards me. (Completely unapologetic, natch.)
I really felt terrible that this was my first impression, especially since it looked like they were all getting ready to head to the pool before my idiot dog made a bid for freedom, but she was very friendly and said her own dog used to be a terrible escape artist herself. Apparently that’s how she got so good at wrangling unleashed dogs into tight spaces; she also said it made her quite familiar with the midday phone call from neighbors letting her know her dog was loose. At least she said he was great with her kids?
Anyway, I went looking. On one side of my house, the double-doored gate lists pretty badly and doesn’t latch well; there’s terrible drainage right next to that, too, which means the ground under the gate is basically six inches of mud. Hamlet had wedged the door open as far as he could, then dug a basketball-sized hole under the fence and forced his way out. I had to get my galoshes to wade out into the standing rainwater so I could fill the mudhole again, then wedged a paving stone the previous owners had left up against the fence to keep that bottom portion closed as much as possible.
And so his amazing adventure ended. But naturally, not before I discovered he’d gotten his hideously muddy paws on the one piece of furniture in the house he’s not supposed to touch.
