Patches' second great adventure.

Hi everydog, kitty, hammie and hooman! It's me, Patches! As some of you may know, we had a new roof put on our house. Well, on Wednesday, when the workers got here, Mom and Dad warned them to always make sure the gates to the backyard fence are closed. Well, it went very well for most of the day. After Mom came home from that place she calls "work", we ate our dinner and then made our usual after dinner trip outside. Just as Dad opened the back door for us to charge through, Mom saw, out the window, that one of the gates was open. She yelled at Dad, but it was too late! Poppy and Penny went to the right, but I went to the left and saw the open gate. I was OUT before anyone could catch me. I stopped to sniff the neighbor, across the street and then ran like a maniac through the subdivision. Mom was hot on my trail, but it was so hot outside, that she didn't make it very far. Dad was telling her that I would come back, but Mom was freaking out! She was yelling for Dad to get the car keys, but he didn't hear her. She had to go all the way to the back yard and into the house because the garage door was closed.

As she ran through the house to get the keys, the phone rang. For some strange reason, she grabbed it and it was a neighbor down the street. She asked Mom if one of her dogs was out and she told her that she had me. She knew who to call when she saw a loose Airedale! Mom and Dad finally jumped into the Aire-mobile and went to her house. She had me by the collar, but as Dad got out to get me, I slipped out of the collar and took off again. She didn't realize that you have to grab the right part of a Martingale collar for it to tighten up. I headed back toward my house with about 5 or 6 people yelling at me. As Mom and Dad pulled up in front of our house, I was standing in front of my own gate, but Mom had closed it on her way out so Poppy and Penny didn't decide to join me on my adventure. When Dad started coming toward me, I ran to the other neighbor's house, but I finally turned around and went back to the gate. This time, Dad got it open and I ran in! I was home safe, but Mom was still freaking out! I don't know what her big problem was...I just wanted to sniff out all my new neighbors! The roofers felt really bad about leaving the gate open, but that didn't help anything! After my second great adventure, Mom and Dad walked all the way through the house to check both gates before opening the door again!

Poppy is feeling slightly better, today, but I think she's still going to go to the v-e-t tomorrow. She didn't eat her breakfast or dinner, yesterday and didn't want breakfast this morning. She IS up walking around more and she's wagging her tail this morning.

A few days ago, Poppy came into the house with blood all over the side of her face and Mom freaked out! She does that a lot where one of us doggies are concerned. She cleaned the blood off Poppy's face and couldn't figure out how it happened. She saw two little punctures and thought "snake bite". She kept going back to look at it again and decided that it wasn't a snake bite, but maybe Poppy scraped her face on the fence. We got the bleeding stopped and Mom "doctored" her and decided to watch her very closely. The area never swelled up and Poppy was fine for about 2 days before she started feeling puney. Of course, all this happened in the evening after the vet's office was closed. Now, Mom is thinking maybe she should have taken her to the emergency vet and paid through the nose.

The roof is finally all done so hopefully, I won't be escaping anymore and if Poppy was upset about all the pounding, she should should settle down now. The only one who hasn't freaked Mom out this week, is Penny. She barked a lot when the roofers were here, but she hasn't escaped and she isn't sick or anything. It's a good thing ONE of us is normal!

See you all next time!

Aire-hugs,

Patches (and Poppy & Penny too!)