I am not the greatest map maker, as you can see from the above sketch. The lines and arrows are the route Yigo took through my neighborhood a little while ago when he broke off his leash and embarrassed me and my family. I'll give a play-by-play, because you probably can't interpret my beautifully created powerpoint map.
So it was a pretty evening and I decided I would take my dog, Yigo, and my parents' dog, Sydney, for a stroll around the neighborhood. We had done so countless times before, but this walk turned into a chase worthy of the movies.
The problem began with me hooking the leash to Yigo's identification tag instead of the ring on his collar. For those of you without dogs, the metal ring on an id tag is very weak, so a 40-pound dog tugging is going to break it, and Yigo did. Free from his chains, Yigo bolted to the yard across the street. I didn't want to lose sight of him, so I didn't take Sydney inside, but took him running across the yard to try and bring back Yigo.
Well, because I was afraid to let Sydney's leash go, I was very limited in my chances to catch Yigo. Sydney is the craziest dog I know and I was terrified of him running loose in the neighborhood. He'd probably try and jump into a moving car if given the chance.
Faced with this dilemma, I called my house to get reinforcements. My mother and father quickly came outside and started calling to Yigo, but he was free and having a blast. He wasn't coming back without a fight. Once my parents crossed the street, Yigo stopped running circles around me and bolted farther down the street. My mom tried telling me to let her handle Sydney, but he is almost 70 pounds and would drag her across several lawns with ease. That's when my brother showed up to help with Sydney and more problems arose.
He and my dad took turns tugging very hard on Sydney's leash to try and get him back to the house. But Sydney saw how happy Yigo was running around that he wanted to join in. So while me and my mom chased Yigo through the mean neighbors' lawn, Sydney was slowly maneuvering his way out of his collar.
In the mean neighbors' lawn, who would have come out yelling had they seen a dog running in their yard, I had position on Yigo and would have tackled him, but my mom had caught up to us and as I moved to grabbed Yigo, she set a pick and ruined my plan. Yigo then took off toward the street again where Sydney and the rest of my family were waiting.
It was at that moment that Sydney escaped his leash and went chasing after Yigo. My dad and brother just stood in the road with confused looks on their faces.
So now I am sprinting down the street while our neighbor in house B is trying to have a conversation with me about my time in Guam. I didn't mean to be rude, but I had to catch my dogs!
After a quick run, I thought I had Yigo trapped in a backyard (A), but the little bugger is way more agile than me, and he had no problem running another circle around me.
That's when the humans finally caught a break. Sydney is not in the best of shape. He is probably 10-15 pounds overweight to be exact. So he was getting tired and wasn't quick enough to get away from my lunge. One down, one to go.
By the time I had Sydney's collar and leash back on, Yigo was now running freely through Neighbor C's yard. There are a lot of trees on the edge of their lawn, so Yigo was easily ducking in between them while I clumsily chased. After a few minutes of this, I lured an exhausted Yigo into the car with promises of treats.
While the dogs were captured and unharmed, it still was an embarrassing day for the whole Rickel clan.
Band on the Run - Wings
No comments:
Post a Comment