Just this side of Heaven

Meeting strange animals.....
Our first full day here was a joy to behold and a chance for Sunny to explore. I was unloading the car and didn't latch the gate (like that would stop him) when Sunny,  Lotto and Riggins were let outside. I noticed the gate unlatched when I see this black and white butt heading down the lane. It was a real "Oh Crap" moment. Meanwhile, the other dogs were standing inside the fence watching what I was going to do. They soon lost interest when I did close the gate. Anyway, back to Sunny. I should probably tell you that the house has a creek running along side of it, and a neighbor on the other side of it. Sunny took the first opportunity to go investigate the creek. Sunny has always had a penchant for water and loves any source deep enough for him to snorkle in and splash around. Now mind you this is a mountain stream close to the source and to say it's cold is an understatement. Didn't bother him. Oh, did I tell you that the neighbor has 3 little Yorkies, all intact males who are convinced they are Rottweilers. I did say that Sunny likes all dogs, but having had a incident with a Chihuahua with a bad attitude a couple of years ago. He doesn't trust small yappie dogs. Well, while he was acting out in the creek these 3 Yorkies, who always have the cutest little sweaters on, started yapping at him from the security of their raised porch. I have no idea of what they were saying but it certainly piqued Sunny's interest and he decided to go "visit" the tiny terrors. He loped up the bank and proceeded towards the house. I think I also forgot to tell you that the neighbor has a large sow (for city folk that is a girl pig). She is quite impressive in size and easily twice as big as he is. Now Sunny was born in the midwest and lived there for the first few years of his life. He is no stranger to farms. He knows about cows, horses, sheep and free range chickens (that's another story but you can use your imagination to figure out how badly that turned out),  but this was a new animal to him. Sunny is an AKC champion and has been around dog shows a lot and has seen his share of strange dogs, but this one beat them all. The pig's pen is under the porch where the Yorkie's are. The Yorkies are barking and I can only assume that it wasn't "hi, how are ya, come up and play". Sunny stood transfixed looking at this huge smelly thing that was ignoring him. You could see by the look on his face that he was thinking, "what the hell is that?". After about 30 seconds he decided he didn't care and wanted to play. He ran up to the pen, Yorkies still barking, and got into the play posture and barked at the pig. Now you could see that this pig wasn't impressed, in no mood for playing with this annoying dog, and the Yorkies had a huge respect for her. My thoughts are there used to be more than three Yorkies and they fell into the pen after leaning to far out on the deck and were eaten by this huge animal. I think the Yorkies were hoping that the pig would eat Sunny. But again I digress (I told you that I did that alot) and it's just my vivid imagine that the pig is a dog eater. Anyway, Sunny spent the next ten minutes trying to get this pig's attention. Of course, the pig ignored him. Sunny eventually got tired of trying to play with the pig, or else he was tired of being yapped at by the Yorkies. In either case, he headed back to the creek got himself totally wet and then decided to come on home. You know the saying that, "there is nothing more affectionate than a wet dog", it's true. Anyway, that's how I met my neighbors who are really nice.


Later that same day, Sunny jumped the fence. Now Sunny is a world class fence jumper. He doesn't need any kind of a running start, he merely stands about a foot from the fence and lifts himself up and sails over. To date there hasn't been a fence that has defeated Sunny, including a 6 foot chain link. The only thing that does stop him is an electric wire. He won't mess with a wire. He learned in early puppyhood that wires "bite". Of course that doesn't mean that he doesn't try to get out some other way. He never goes too far and will come home and scratch at the door or gate as if to say, I'm home, let me in.


Anyway as I started to say, Sunny jumped the fence. I was in no mood to go through the pig incident again. As I shuffled up the lane behind him calling his name and him ignoring me, I decided to pull out the big guns. There is one technique that never fail to work unless your dog is deaf or hates you. The technique is to fall to the ground and howl in pain. The dog will return to you if only out of curiosity. Well the technique worked. Sunny came trotting up to me to see what I was screaming about I grabbed him by his neck (he wasn't wearing a collar) and he knew he had been had. I'm telling you that this doesn't fail. Of course be careful how you do throw yourself to the ground. That part isn't fool proof. The one thing I didn't count on was that the neighbors would also respond to the cries of pain. This isn't NYC  where you can lay shot and bleeding and people will step over you or on you as the situation requires. This is the mountains of Georgia where people are nice and friendly and look out for their neighbors because they don't have many. So of course as I'm struggling to get on my feet and maintain a hold on "Houdini" I see the neighbor come running out the door. Of course, I am waving to him to tell him I'm all right. I hollered up at him that I was just trying to get Sunny. Now I know from having met him and talked to him that this wasn't in his realm of experiences. He hollered back "ya'llrite,?" Up here that is pronounced as one word. I answered him that I was fine. The best thing about this is that if I were to fall down screaming Sunny would still bite at the bit and come back. Now I know that I am not the only dog person that knows this trick. My advice would be the following. If you come upon a situation where there is a person hollering in pain on the ground and there is a dog sashaying up the street. Give it a minute. If the dog comes back and the owner is doing an AHA and has the dog under control and gets up off the ground, the situation is solved. If the dog doesn't return and the person gets up off the ground and heads for their car to play the ultimate card which is to fool the dog by thinking it is going for ride, the situation is solved. But, if the dog continues on it's way and the person is still on the ground making distressing noises you might want to go investigate. Kind of shuffle on over, lean down and say "ya'll rite?"