Where I was at midnight

April writing...

So this is the story of my mischievous pup, Pickle.

Pickle is my stubborn dog. He has to wear an electric collar so he won’t dig under the back fence and head into the neighbors yards, where there are bigger dogs waiting to ‘play.’

About 3 months ago, we let him out one night without his collar, cause we were headed to bed…and in that 3-5 minutes, he dug and got under the fence. (He liked to follow after the chipmunks that we have by our shed) The only problem was…he picked the back fence. (You see our backyard backs up evenly to two other back yards. We have a privacy fence, both of our back neighbors have privacy fences, plus there are two other chain link fences falling apart between the privacy fences.)

So that’s where he got stuck. Luckily, this night my husband was home and he is tall and skinny enough to wiggle his way between the fences and rescue Pickle. So after that night (I think he was traumatized for a while and steered clear of all of the fences) it hasn’t happened again….UNTIL LAST NIGHT.

Well, I let him out last night…with his electric collar on…because I had learned my lesson. I went in to get ready for bed. When I noticed that Pickle hadn’t come back inside I knocked on the back window to let him know it was time to come back in. I waited, and waited…nothing. So I figured that he was probably sleeping in the backyard, which he loves to do. So I walked out to get him. I called out his name and he wasn’t there. After my eyes adjusted (the lighting isn’t great in the back yard) I couldn’t see my little white dog anywhere. Then I heard him bark. Sure enough it was coming from what sounded like my back neighbors backyard. I thought to myself, “you have GOT to be kidding me!”

I ran inside, grabbed my tennis shoes and a flashlight. Then I ran around to the side of the house to get the ladder. Now this thing is heavy, so I am dragging it across the backyard! I lay it up against the back fence at the spot where I see he has dug his way under. I peeked over the fence and ran my light through the empty spaces in between the fence and sure enough…there he was about 25 feet down the fence line. He was stuck between to fence posts and wouldn’t try squeezing past to come back towards me.

So I moved the ladder over to where he was and tried to straddle the fences and to reach down between to grab the nap of his neck to pull him out. But…I have zero balance and my arms aren’t long enough…and I could see bad things happening. I was home alone (my husband was at work) so I knew that I would have to do this on my own. So I thought, well he got himself in there by digging, so I guess I will dig a new hole and get him out. So that’s what I did. I think in that process I must have scared Pickle half to death cause he wouldn’t’ dig from his side to help, that and I am sure he knew he was in trouble already. Not to mention he was being shocked every few seconds cause he had his collar on. Poor guy. Luckily it was on a pretty low setting.

Finally, he started digging, so while he got started, I ran into the house to grab my camera…as I am always the one to keep track of wonderful memories like this! Haha!

So here is where the video starts off…you have me, out of breath from running around, dragging a ladder and digging, just begging and encouraging my dog to dig himself out. Right before I turned on the camera, I had dug out enough space to reach under and at least grab his electric collar off his neck…so he wouldn’t get shocked anymore.

The whole ordeal lasted about 20 minutes I caught the last 3-4 minutes on film. Enjoy the video.

Pickle...stuck under the fence from April Eslick on Vimeo.