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Blog Entry 22 of 40 Forest Creatures

Let me introduce you to our cast of characters. My husband "Pops" and I are both over 50, fairly educated and we live on five plus acres between Black Forest and Peyton with 4 Akitas and a truly imperfect cat, named of course, Purrfect. I grew up in Colorado, he's from Chicago. We love the Broncos and the Bears, music, television and technology. Some people lead fairly quiet lives. Our lives are usually filled with constant misadventure. I am not sure if it is because we have several dominant pets or because my husband is always misbehaving but whatever the reasons we are usually in the middle of a storm. This blog will chronicle our adventures when I have time to file them. Sometimes I will be asking advice, sometimes I will just try to make users laugh.

Blog Url: http://coloradosprings.yourhub.com/~PulaAdventures

Bringing up Beauty

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Contributed by: Pula Davis on 1/31/2007

The last time I posted we were struggling with our 1-year-old Akita, Beauty, who had just discovered that she could walk over the snow drifts along our fence lines and take off. That and the bitter cold have combined to give us a lot of trouble in the past few days.

Our friend with the front-end loader came and removed all the snow along the front fence line where Beauty had made her getaway. I thought that might end the problem, but she found another spot in the back acreage that was also drifted over.

In her defense, Beauty on the whole, has been a good dog and true to her name. She's very pretty and extremely loving. She is also usually obedient. But lately she's been restless and jealous of our puppy Roshi. Once she discovered the escape route she has spent a lot of time exploring. Maybe she, like everyone else, is tired of being cooped up by the weather.

Our temporary solution of putting her on a runner has been painful for everyone but Beauty. She has succeeded in winding the cord around me, the other dogs and every decorative item in the yard. This spring I am going to have a lot of refurbishing of trees, shrubs and fixtures to do.

So realizing that our shins and the rest of the landscaping can't survive Beauty's ramblings we have installed additional fencing and bought a new energizer for the electric fence wire. We had stopped using the electric after a number of "electrocutions" of myself and my husband. When we went to reconnect it, we discovered it did not work.

The installation of additional fencing did not happen without incidents - we couldn't keep the fence from curling, flipping and attaching to everything, including us. My husband has a hole in his palm, my face feels like sandpaper and it looks pretty rough but we got it done. All the while Beauty was watching and sizing up the situation.

I should add that the other dogs are oblivious to all of this, further making the effort and expense more ironic. Because it has been so cold the animals have had to stay inside where I would love to have a pet cam so I could see just how they manage to get past any dog gates or doors to get into all kinds of mischief when we aren't home.

It remains to be seen if all our hard work will pay off and our escapee will be contained. I have included some photos of the culprit Beauty and the fence lines before and after.

Meanwhile, it is snowing right now. I can't wait until Groundhog Day. I am sure the groundhog will see his shadow and it will be wearing a parka, gloves and snowshoes.

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