I Have Skills

I have some amazing skills. Today I fixed the dog's electric fence. Took three days of locating and examining the wire throughout the yard and in the woods, but I finally found the frayed wire, close to the house, where some critter had been working on it. The fence has been out of commission for about six months, but my dog is not the most intelligent of God's creatures, and she never figured out that the neighborhood was hers for the taking until a few days ago, when she must have wandered close to the edge of the yard and it finally hit her that there was no beeping sound to warn her of impending shock should she venture another step forward.

When she did leave the yard, she made a beeline for the neighbor's goldfish pond. She loves the stinkiness, and splashed around until we hauled her out and put her on a long leash attached to a tree. That made her unhappy. She barked at us, particularly when she spied us eating dinner out of her reach. The next day, we let her off the leash, thinking maybe she forgot that she could leave, but alas for us, we had not anticipated the proximity of a certain feline, and the next thing we knew, our dog was racing down the driveway and chased the poor cat up a tree, four houses down. We hauled her home again.

This morning, before again returning to work on the fence, I grabbed her by the collar and attempted to lead her to the leash again. She was having none of that. She dug in her heals and dragged her hairy butt against the asphalt. When I put the leash on her collar, she mistakenly assumed it was time for a walk and started running along with me. Poor mutt, I lead her to the longer leash, still tied to a tree, so I could be sure she wouldn't leave the yard again while we worked.

When finally the light on the transformer in the garage went green instead of blinking red, we put the electric collar back on the dog, and she immediately headed for what she expected to be a "hole" in the electric fence. The collar beeped (it's only a sound; she only gets shocked if she keeps going forward) and she leaped back. "Woof?" she no doubt uttered to herself. She ran to the other side of the yard where she had exited to the goldfish pond before, stepping gingerly one paw in front of the next. Her ears perked up, her expression nonplused. She started backing up, and we knew she was once again contained, constrained, detained. Just the way we like her.