An unsavory experience

Sunday morning I was supposed to meet Shawn at the church at 8:30 for a meeting that we were supposed to attend together. It had been a hustle-bustle morning trying to get everyone ready enough that I could leave them and then still have them ready for our 9:30 church, but I breathed a sigh as I left the house that I had done it!

I was nearing the end of our long driveway when I began to hear strange sounds emanating from the right rear side of our suburban. I thought I heard a scrambling sound and then a "thump". My first thought was that our cat was on the top of the car, so I stopped the car so that she could jump off. I didn't hear anything, so I pulled slowly ahead once again. And again I heard a thump. This time, I got out of the car and walked around the back end to see what was going on.

You can imagine my shock when I saw our dog, Jack, chained to the right rear wheel of our car, strangling, because his chain was wrapped up so tight around the wheel. I started yelling for Caden, but of course he couldn't hear me. I was trying to lift Jack and untangle him and trying to find a way to detach him, but couldn't find anything, and I felt like time was running out because Jack was trying with all his might to breath!

I didn't feel like I had time to even leave him, but I finally ran over to the Jonson's because at the end of our driveway their house is actually closer than our house. I rang the doorbell and couldn't hear any response, so I started ringing the doorbell multiple times and knocking. Greg finally answered the door and ran to the rescue (he used to be an EMT) . Boy do I love our neighbors! He cut Jack's collar off and Jack was, thankfully, just fine.

I thought that I would be late for my meeting, but it turns out that the whole incident lasted only 5-10 minutes at the most. Seemed like forever while it was happening. I arrived at my meeting a little shaky and a lot distracted!

So why was Jack chained to our wheel, you would certainly be asking? Well, Jack has taken to being the world's best watch dog, which is a nice way of saying "nuisance barker." He'll bark for 45 minutes to one hour straight every night, take a fifteen minute barking break and then start all over again. We have lots of critters creeping around outside, during the night, where we live. I get used to his barking and have learned to sleep through it, but where Shawn is gone so much of the time, he comes home and can't sleep a wink. So when Jack really gets going and won't be quiet, he takes him out to the garage.

The first time that Shawn put Jack in the garage, he tied him over in a corner where it didn't look like there was anything he could chew up. The next morning we discovered that he had chewed our garage door sensor right off of the door. After that, Shawn tied him to the wheel because a wheel was about the only thing he couldn't chew up. The only problem was, that I had NO IDEA that he had moved him that night. The night before, we had a lot of couples over for dinner and to play games and I went to bed exhausted and didn't even hear Shawn get up. (Although Shawn says that when he got back in bed I said, "thanks".)

Shawn felt really bad about putting me through that experience, but he still couldn't resist a chance to tease. He said, "Boy! I'll bet Jack's going to be really scared the next time I tie him to the tire." Um... I didn't think that was very funny. I snapped that Jack had better not ever be tied to that tire again! Only to look over and see him smiling at me. Seriously. Stuff like that is always so much more traumatizing to the person that it happens to.

Incidentally, Jack must be a lot smarter than I would think a dog could be, because he has apparently put two and two together. He'll bark a few times and stop now. Shawn went out last night to praise him after he stopped barking and he slunk around the corner of the house, thinking that Shawn was going to take him to the garage, we think. Poor old dog. We were both traumatized, but hopefully some good will come of it!