Were I to blame someone (and who among us can resist doing just that?) it would be JS. It is JS who harvests the giant 30+ acre hay field that adjoins our property. JS was out mowing the field early in the morning, so once he left, the dogs and I took advantage of the newly-shortened hay and went for a walk. There were, sadly, several carcasses -- mowing casualties -- in the field and this proved too enticing for my dog, Annabelle. She rolled on some hapless, flattened rodent and instantly squiggled out of her collar. She took off running like a bolt of lightning as I stood holding her limp collar and lead.
Annie went flying up the cut field, then did a sharp jag to the right and then went boing-boing-boing-ing through the tall uncut hay. I scrambled after her with Ollie the beagle, and we ran (pant, pant) all the way up (pant, pant) to the edge (pant, HEAVE, pant) of the woods (GASP! WHEEZE! RETCH!). By this time, Annie was doing fly-bys about every 90 seconds, so Ollie and I kept to our normal route around the perimeter of the field, then we jumped a fence, skittered down the lane, and bolted (pant, pant, WHEEZE) across the riding field and up to my barn.
Annie squeezed under an overhead barn door and, more amazingly, Ollie and I had enough lung and leg capacity to run up to the barn before Annie came back out. I let Ollie slip under the same door, and then closed both dogs behind it, went around to another barn entrance, climbed the locked (@#$%&!!!) gate, and captured Annie in front of the feed room. The dogs looked at me, and I back at them, as all three of us stood panting and bleary-eyed after our cross country run.
This scenario has played out similarly before. One time Annie was popping in and out of snow drifts and managed to hook her collar on a briar. Hooking a briar generally means being held up by ripped clothing or a jagged bloody streak or both, but not for Annie. For her, hooking a briar meant freedom, and she bounded off across the snowy field while her collar stayed twinkling in the bramble. Ollie the beagle was lunging in hot pursuit as she pulled me along, but we were no match for the fleet-footed Annie. Clearly beaten, we started angling towards home but not before we took a short cut in front of an old tobacco barn, only to be buzzed again by Annie, and there were moments when I was literally skiing down the snowy hill being pulled by a heaving, baying, frenzied beagle.
Whenever a dog breaks free they inevitably head for the barn. Even though they are not ever allowed in the barn, they know who lives there: barn cats. And if you're one of my dogs, you're chosen method of expressing delinquency is to chase a barn cat. Annie is not fazed by having to climb a small mountain of hay bales to get to a cat, and it would appear that getting hissed at and slashed on the nose is one of the perks. I don't understand this thing they have with barn cats, but it is where we always find ourselves once someone has breached protocol and gone rogue.
I guess I should have named one of my dogs "Sarah."
But we always have a happy ending, the three of us trudging up the lane towards home, where the dogs will be asleep within minutes.
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