There's a dog stuck in the yard.

           This is the German Shorthaired Pointer in my side yard.  Hard to see because of the glare. 

What?  What the heck?  A couple of nights ago I was watching t.v., (you know that it is Luke's favorite thing in the world) when I decided to make a cup of tea.  Telling Luke that I would be right back; Elsa and I head up to the kitchen.  As I reached for my cup I heard a strange noise; I froze, trying to locate it's whereabouts.  Elsa starred at the water cooler; was it making the noise?  I walked over to the water cooler that is beside a bay window in the kitchen.  Listening very carefully I leaned in to see if it was the cooler that was making the noise, when I saw movement.  There was big movement out the window but the glare from the light was making it hard to see.  As I moved in to get a better look I gasped; it was a dog and it was trying to get out of my side yard. 

I stopped and thought for a moment; it couldn't get in the backyard as long as the gate second gate was shut.  I ran out immediately to check that it was.  I came back in and had a good look; there was a small German Shorthaired Pointer trying to scale the half wall that is on one side of my house.  I have no idea how long it had been there; we'd been downstairs for sometime.  It was very dark on the side of the house, so I considered that I was going to have to grab the dog right away if I opened the gate.  I'd need two hands to catch the dog maybe and I wouldn't have enough light to read the tag if there were tags on the dog.  When I went out to open the front gate a large black dog came running down the side hill.  Back into the house I went to think some more.  There were two dogs out there?  I grabbed a flashlight to have a look. 

At this point Elsa was charging around the house like a crazy dog.  She could hear the jingles coming from the black dog's collar and was barking up a storm.  The dog was running around the yard, up the hill and down again.  I went back to the kitchen to see if the dog was still there and it was.  But now the black dog was in there as well; what happened next was amazing.  The black dog leapt out of the side yard; over the wall that is about three feet high.  Once it was up on the hill it turned to wait for the other dog.  The GSP made a gallant effort but didn't make it.  Then the black dog went back down into the side yard and jumped out again.  The German Shorthaired just could not jump high enough to get it's back legs over the wall.  This happened several times, the black dog was trying it's hardest to show the other dog how to get out, amazing.

I wanted to contain both dogs so that they didn't go running off into the night but it would be difficult.  Luckily Brad got home and with a heads up from me as to what was going on he called to the black dog as soon as he got out of his truck.  I finally saw the dog well enough to see that it was a Labrador.  She was afraid of Brad so he bent down (that's my boy) and she came to him.  He read her tags out to me and I dialed.  They lived just a few streets over and the owners didn't even realize that they were out.  I asked if they also had a GSP; they did and both dogs were apparently friendly.  The Labrador was most definitely friendly and we leashed her up until her owners arrived. 

I decided to leave the GSP in the side yard where she was stuck.  She seemed frantic; I thought the second that I opened the gate that she'd bolt and be gone.  A dog in such a state of panic can do things that they would never normally do.  So there she stayed until they got to the house.  It was a good thing that we left her in the yard because even with her owner opening the gate she tried to bolt past him as he grabbed her collar.  But they both went into the car and headed for home.  Lucky dogs and lucky owners.  Standing waiting for the owners to arrive, I realized just how invisible a black dog at night is.  She or both could have easily be hit. 

Brad and I went back into the house where Elsa gave us the once over; sniffing every spot the dog had touched on us.  She finally calmed down and I took the baby gate down that I had put up so that Elsa wouldn't see the dog in the side yard.  All was back to normal and Mr. Luke?  He was still on the couch downstairs waiting for me to continue our t.v. watching. 

We put a fence up on the side hill so that stray dogs could not wander into the backyard.  Another one will be going up this weekend so that they can't get into the side yard either.