‘Boo’ - The Tenacious Pup

This little adventure took place a couple of years ago when we were living in Westport.

Escaping is what Boo does best. At only eight months old, our pup needed to go to ‘Doggy Day Care’ for a day. We had our house on the market and the real estate agent called to say there were prospective clients booked for a viewing. Unfortunately it was on a day I had to attend a course out of town.

We have three dogs and mostly they are well behaved. However, at this particular time our youngest dog had developed an obsession with digging holes – and not just your average sized hole. They were more like craters!

Each day after work my husband had to fill in the holes and repair them to resemble the rest of the lawn (which was no quick task!).

We were keen to sell our house and knew that presentation was crucial. Both of us worked full time and had to leave the house by 7am. We weren’t confident that Boo would refrain from another digging frenzy.

How could we keep the place immaculate before the real estate agent showed potential buyers through?

Our dogs have never been to boarding kennels before. However we were in a dilemma. Could we trust Boo to restrain herself from destroying the yard? Many days of excavations told us we couldn’t!

The only option we had was to book Boo into a dog care facility for the day.

I felt so guilty having to leave her, but we felt we had no choice. We told ourselves…it was only for one day!?

She was trembling as I handed her over to the Day Care owner. It broke my heart.

Less than an hour after I left Boo, she had scaled the fence and disappeared. I was later told an immediate search began but nine hours later she was still missing.

After my course ended I turned my phone on and was surprised to see numerous calls from an unknown number. After hearing that Boo was missing in action, I quickly called Bernie and hastily made my way home.

An hour later, I pulled up at the ‘Doggy Day Care’ hoping Boo would have been found. No such luck! The sun was setting, indicating the day was drawing to an end.  I headed for home to collect a torch, plus some clothing to dot around paddocks for Boo to go to if she came across them.

As I raced up our drive I was astounded (and over the moon) to see Boo waiting inside our ‘dog-proof enclosure’. I couldn’t believe my eyes! How did she find her way home?

To cut a long story short, Boo ran across two farms, swam across a river mouth, ran five kilometres along a beach, then managed to navigate her way through various streets back home. Her final act was climbing back over our ‘dog-proof fence’ to wait for us to arrive home!

Needless to say – we all slept soundly that night. And one of us was more dog-tired than the others!