For a brief time in the wee hours of the morning, Iris was nowhere to be found.
She's been going in her kennel quite willingly, so last night I didn't bother to latch the door; I just closed it gently.
Somewhere around 5 A.M., our regular nightly thunderstorm awakened me. Glancing at the kennel, I saw the door open and knew Iris was somewhere hiding from the storm. She is terrified by storms. I figured she was probably curled up in Cliff's bathroom, the one off our bedroom; that's where she usually goes to hide.
But she wasn't there. My next thought was that she was likely curled up on some furniture, although I haven't had to call her off any furniture for several days. Nope, not there. Nor was she in any of her hidey-holes where I often find her.
Folks, I looked everywhere a dog could possibly be; it isn't a big trailer house, so it doesn't take long to search the whole place. Nowhere could I find my dog. I was really, really surprised that she wasn't in the first place I looked... Cliff's bathroom. That's always been her favorite hiding place.
Wait... surely she wouldn't have gotten in the bathtub?
Indeed she had. I peeked behind the shower curtain and there she was, curled up in one end of Cliff's bathtub.
Look what opened up for me overnight.
On another note, there's a heart-rending story about a pet up for adoption at Wayside Waifs. I don't want him, but I sure wish he could find a good home. He's been at Wayside for over a year, bless his heart. Click HERE to read his story and see his video.
This morning, Cliff and I got the electric fence put up to keep the horses out of the lush grass that would have eventually led to founder. We did this in the mud, by the way. That two inches of rain left quite a mess out there. At least the electric fence posts were easy to drive in the ground.
I predicted to Cliff that Snickers, the next-door neighbor's twenty-one-year-old mare, would take off running and break through the electric fence; we watched the horses for a few minutes after turning them out, and although there was some running and cutting up, they all came to a halt at the new fence-line.
But ten minutes later, a horse did run through it: Not Snickers, but Sassy. Somehow the other two horses knew something had happened to frighten her, and they ran through the gate back into the lot; Sassy was afraid to go back where she had just gotten shocked, but she stood at the big gate, which was closed, until Cliff let her in with her pals. Then he fixed the fence.
I noticed six hours later that they were all still in the big lot. There really isn't much to eat there; they've got it cropped to the ground. Evidently they were afraid to go back out. So I got a can with a little sweet feed in it and stepped through their walk-through gate. Tude and Snickers hesitantly followed me, but Sassy did not. No way. She wasn't going out there to get hurt again.
A while ago I looked out to see Snickers and Tude grazing happily in the electric-fenced-off area. Where was Sassy?
Right up there in the safety of the big lot by herself. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
