Have you ever owned a female dog? Ugh.

Amie, my Bichon, was in heat and we were being very careful about not allowing her to escape out the back door and into the world of big hairy mutts.  That wasn’t easy because during this time she was particularly attracted to non-purebred guys. You know … kind of like Liz Taylor and Larry Fortensky.

One day after running errands, the kids and I walked into our back door and found a huge black dog INSIDE our kitchen!  We screamed, he ran, and Amie just stood there looking innocent, like, “What?”

We shooed him out the door, then tried to figure out how in the heck he had gotten in. I thought surely one of the doors had been left ajar.  Nope.  Maybe one of the low windows along the backside of our house.  Nope.

Then we discovered he had first jumped THROUGH a window on the top half of the door leading from our garage to the back yard.  There was broken glass on the ground and fur and flesh caught on the glass shards sticking out of the window.  Ick.  From there he found the doggie door into our laundry room. This doggie door is one of those the teeny weeny ones for cats and small dogs, no bigger than his head.  I still don’t know how, but somehow he had gotten himself through that doggie door.  I guess where there’s a will, there’s a way.

We were in the kitchen still figuring all this out when we heard the dogs barking and lo and behold, there was our friend again, sticking his head through the doggie door.  He had jumped through that window again!

So we covered the broken window.  He whined, he paced, and he scratched at the door. I thought he would go away.  (Oh, silly me.)  I looked out the window and saw him climbing our fence.  I mean, really climbing!  Putting all his paws in place and then moving up, one paw at a time.  He wasn’t graceful, but he was over in minutes.  His head was back in the doggie door in seconds.

After the third time of watching him climb over the fence, I gave up and locked the doggie door.  Amie would just have to hold it in.  When I woke up the next morning, he was asleep on one of the patio chairs, like he lived here or something.  Well, I needed to let Amie out to do her stuff, and he was still just a-waitin’ for her.

This was getting serious.  I was gonna have to get creative because I had to take the kids to school.  Before I left, I put a leash on the dog and tied him to a tree in the front yard. I figured maybe his owner might see him and come rescue him.  If not, he would be safe until I got home and could call the dogcatcher.

This story has a good ending. When I got home, the dog was gone and the leash was still there, so I figure the owner came by like I was hoping.  I’m glad.  Amie had puppies two months later, and I’m happy to report the black dog was not the father.  Our poodle, Boudreaux, is now the proud dad of 5 adorable little balls of high quality fluff.