Cassidy's Walkabout

This is, fortunately, a better post than I have a right to make today. Some of you know about my Australian Shepherd, Cassidy. He's generally out at night, keeping foxes and the occasional coyote away. He's a working-bred Aussie, but he thinks that he's a pack of Great Pyrenees. On occasion, Cassidy used to wander, finding or creating a hole in the fence and taking off to parts unknown. He has been very good in the past few months, no longer even barking at the school bus as it goes by. This morning, he was as quiet as could be when the high school bus and then the middle school bus passed the homestead.

Despite his improved behavior, I make regular fence inspections. Usually weekly, I check for weak places and holes that may have been dug underneath. I found Cassidy in the buck pasture last week, although I could find no new holes of any sort. I blamed his appearance there on leaving the gate to the training ring open. (It has a gate that opens into the buck pasture and he might have been able to squeeze through).

It seemed a logical assumption at the time, so I tightened the one gate and have made certain to secure the other one every day. I thought I had the problem fixed. I have to keep reminding myself: never assume anything with dogs or livestock. This morning, when I called him to come inside, Cassidy was missing. Usually, when he hears me moving around in the kitchen, Cassidy will come up to the porch steps and wait for me to open the door. There was simply no sign of him. I called him several times, but no red merle bullet came flashing at me.

At first, I wasn't alarmed. He'd been in the buck pasture before, so why not again? My first response was to check the buck pasture. He wasn't there. I checked the fence perimeter for new holes. Nothing. At this point, it was evident that he was not on my homestead. I asked Kathleen to stay on the phone with me, as I "didn't want to find him by myself." Don't ask why. You know why. After looking under the cottage and checking previous gaps for new gappage, I got in the car and drove around the neighborhood to see if he was dead on the side of the road or on the rural highway very close to my cottage. Nothing. Thank God for small favors, anyway. I left the gate to the road open as I again inspected the fence for holes.

At this point, I called Dan. I related the issue and my worries to him. God bless Dan: he immediately got in his van to go around the neighborhood, stopping at various places to talk to people he knew. None of them had seen Cassidy--but, in other good news, none of them had reported hearing a gunshot, either. That was a load off my mind as, in our livestock-heavy area, roaming dogs are sometimes shot as a matter of course. In such cases, it's possible that the owner will never find out what happened to the dog due to the "SSS" rule (shoot, shovel, and shut up). It's country living. It happens, sad to say. I had to be prepared for that. Just as Dan was telling me that he had one of the neighbors--a sheriff's deputy--on the lookout for Cassidy, I heard a noise in the brush.

It was Cassidy, bounding to greet me!

We hurried to get off the phone, so that I could usher my wonderful, stupid, I-love-you-but-you're-in-a-lot-of-trouble-now-Mister brat of a dog inside. After settling him in his crate as if nothing had happened (Nota Bene: NEVER punish a dog for coming to you), just as I would do every morning when he got inside, I returned outside for a third fruitless fence inspection. Dan drove up as I approached the rear of the cottage. We stood for several minutes at my gate to the road, doing a post-mortem of the morning's events. As we talked, Dan looked at the bottom of the gate.

"What's that," he asked me, pointing at a small section of wire under the corner of my banner.

From where I was standing, I could see a small corner of wire, bent toward the road. As I knelt down and brushed back a few small weeds, I could see that a section about four inches long had been pushed away from the bottom of the gate. A bit of dirt and gravel had been moved away, creating a small gap. Cassidy could definitely get his head in there, then maybe push up on the bottom of the gate. Dan left just a few minutes later, both of us satisfied that we'd probably found the problem.

The wire at the bottom of the gate has since been repaired, but I still have some fence modification that I need to do. I'll also raise the fence perimeter, just in case he finds a way to get over the fence. In addition, I'll be adding a couple of pieces of PVC pipe to the bottom of the wire, just to ensure that he can't push it up again.

So, it's onward and upward. Cassidy is fine. My heart has started beating again. In the spring, I'll be in the market for a new gate, which doesn't have a bottom bar that has rusted away after 40 years. (Hey, when it's time, it's time.) And remember: dogs are like toddlers. It's when they're quiet that some mischief is brewing.

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Just as a final note: if you own a dog (or any animal really), you need to have a recovery plan. If you can't find your pet in the first few minutes, then you need to have a means of expanding the search. I spent about 20 minutes looking for Cassidy on my own before involving Dan. He then expanded the search, by involving the half dozen or so neighbors that form a little network. If he'd remained missing, I would have taken a recent photo of him to the library and made a few "lost dog" flyers to put up over our small community. Dan, who is on NextDoor, would have posted those flyers to his community. I would have posted my flyer on Facebook and in the few businesses on our rural highway within a few miles of the cottage.

The entire process would have taken roughly three hours from my first noticing him missing to the time I posted my last community flyer. Speed is important. It can be the difference between recovering your dog and having him go missing forever. Additionally, make certain your pet is microchipped and registered with a recovery service. I HIGHLY recommend AKC Reunite. They charge $23 for lifetime registration of your dog's chip. Finally, don't forget to check with animal shelters and veterinarians in your area. If Cassidy had been gone for 24 hours, that would have been my next stop.

Thank you, God, for letting my Cassidy come back to me, safe and sound. It could have been so much worse.