Good Dog/Bad Dog

Last night I let Aldo out around 7:00 PM to go potty. As soon as I stepped outside and released him (I make him wait for me to say it's OK for him to go through the door) I saw the biggest rabbit I've ever seen in the wild! This thing had to be like 15-20 lbs. Not fat, just tall. This rabbit was huge!

Of course Aldo takes off chasing it (high prey drive). But the rabbit tried to get out of the corner of my yard and was too big to get out through the fence. How on earth did it even get in?

At this point (the rabbit is cornered) I'm afraid Aldo is going to get it, so I call him off. He sort of listens, and the rabbit manages to get away and cuts diagonally across my yard to the gate of my fence.

This is where it gets weird.

The rabbit crashes into/through the gate so hard, with SO much force, he OPENED the gate. Aldo was hot on his tail, but miraculously, stops short.

By the time I run over there the rabbit is gone (although it's fur is ALL over the fence) and the gate is WIDE open, and Aldo is just standing there.

GOOD DOG!!!!!

That's how people lose their dogs or how dogs get hit by cars, you know?

This morning as I was loading Aldo into the van to go to work I decided to remove this huge god-damned tent/awning thing my mom got me for the quartet. The problem is that it's SO big and heavy that having it isn't necessarily helpful. Also, some of the places we play won't allow it anyway.

I had the garage door open as I loaded this 12 x 12 tent out the side door of the van into the garage.

Aldo is a Bouvier, a herding breed. He's been bred over hundreds of years to NOT like new things (like a huge tent that's bigger than me). He spooks like a horse would. If he was protecting a herd of sheep or cows, that same instinct would keep the riff-raff away from the herd (or the herd away from the riff-raff).

As I'm struggling with the tent and it finally falls over creating a HUGE noise, Aldo practically says aloud, "I'm outta here!" and he jumped from the van and ran out of the garage into the driveway.

BAD DOG!

I called him to come to me, and I could see his dilemma. He clearly wanted to and knew he should, but that damn tent was sort of between us and he was freaked by it falling over.

He began slowly backing up, and I ended up having to chase him to the next door neighbor's front porch to get him to come back.

But at least he didn't keep chasing that rabbit straight out of the yard last night! He's much more good than bad. ;)