Sophie’s Escape Room

Last Friday, our friend Belinda Anderson called to see if I and “the kids” wanted to go on a walk with her down at the fish hatchery in White Sulphur Springs.  By “the kids” she meant of course the only offspring my wife and I have dared to produce, our three dogs, Sadie, Moose and Maya.  I thought it was an outstanding idea, as the past two days had been nice, with temperatures in the 60s for the first time since November.  I was also eager to get a look at the fish hatchery, to see how it was rebounding from the devastating flooding in the area last June.

Trouble was, I had a Sophie’s choice to make when it came to “the kids” because I had three dogs and only two leashes.

We actually own three leashes, but the third retractable leash was in the wife’s car, at work, and I couldn’t find so much as a cloth leash in the house.  Even if I’d had all three leashes, though, the task of taking our three dogs on a walk with only two human beings present is not one I ever relish.  I always wind up having to walk at least two of them, passing Moosie off to Belinda since he’s only 45 pounds of brown obedient dog to deal with.  I then have to walk Sadie and Maya, who are 80ish pounds each, don’t really like each other much, and have a tendency to run in opposite directions when they’re not making a braid with Moose’s leash.  But, hey, I only had the two leashes, I reasoned, so that meant I had to leave one dog at the house.  And since Sadie and Moose have seniority, Maya was have to be the one to get left behind.  Not that this makes the job of leaving her any easier.  If you leave Maya outside with her shock collar on (her “purty collar”) she just howls and jumps on the car with her huge St. Bernard feet and claws, trying to get in with the others.  And if you leave her in the house, she’ll just park herself in the stairwell window and leap on the glass there, potentially tearing down the blinds, while simultaneously rolling huge doggie tears that will break the heart of any dog parents backing out of the driveway, facing her.

Instead, I left her in our bedroom and closed the door.  I figured probably have a nap on our bed, maybe do her nails, and really get in some “me” time while we were gone for an hour or so.  Then I’d give her extra treats when I got home, take her for a walk down the trail and all would be forgiven.  Thusly planned, Sadie, Moose and I left for our walk at the fish hatchery.

An hour or so later we returned to find Maya waiting in the yard.

Er.

This wasn’t good.

Maya being out of the house meant one of three things: A) the wife had come home early, and had let Maya out (not likely, as her car was not in the driveway); B) an intruder had broken in and let Maya out; or C) Maya had somehow managed to escape the locked house on her own.  I wasn’t sure which of these options I liked the least.

We know from experience that Maya can get into the house if the doors are unlocked because she knows how to operate the exterior handles of both the back and front doors (one of which normally requires an opposable thumb).  However, those doors were both locked, not to mention she’d been left in a closed bedroom the door knob of which she has yet to master.  Given her weight, though, I was immediately afraid that she might have managed to break the glass of our floor-length bedroom windows, which are practically door-sized themselves.  She had no blood on her, though, so if she broke out she did it cleanly.  This would require investigation.

Slowly I unlocked and opened the front door.  No intruders killed me.  The back door, I saw, was closed and locked and the bedroom door was still in place and closed.  I opened it to find that indeed she had gone through a window, just without breaking the glass.  What she appears to have done was chosen the one window in the room that is covered by a screen, clawed through that screen and used her weight to force open the window on its track.  She could have tried any of the other screenless windows, but, no, she had to go through the one with the screen.  The window has two latches, but only the top one was closed.  It gave to her force without actually breaking, though.  Once it was open enough to squeeze out, she was free.  Only later did we discover that she’d also peed all over Sadie’s dog bed, which was directly in front of her escape window.

I was angry, sure, but mostly at the screen being torn.  Her escape was otherwise pretty impressive and definitely sent a message that she doesn’t want to be left behind.

When we were about to climb into bed that night, we discovered yet another doggie protest action, one which did not feel good to discover in sock feet: the dog bed directly beneath the window through which Maya had escaped was soaked through with what we can only assume is dog pee.  At least, there were no empty 32 oz cups of water handy.  And it was Sadie’s bed, Maya’s usual arch nemesis.   She probably decided that if Sadie got to go somewhere, at least she wouldn’t have a dry bed to sleep in later.  Either that or Maya just really had to go and didn’t quite make it until her escape could be enacted.

The job of replacing the screen has got us in a screen replacement project for the five or so screens our various doggie residents have destroyed over the years.  They’re such a pain in the ass to replace, though, that after we did the one Maya tore up, we decided to make it a one-screen-per-day kind of project.  Or maybe one a week.