And just like that, Buster is contained.
For now.
Over the past year, my backyard has slowly turned into a graveyard of attempts to try to contain our dog, Buster.
There’s the missing boards from our fence and the neighbor’s fence that he’s either headbutted or kicked loose to escape.
There’s the electric fence that seemed to be working until a helicopter flew over. Then the electrical shock didn’t seem to matter much. He just ran through it.
We love Buster, and we want him to continue being our dog, so we’ve tried everything possible to give him a big space to run in.
He just wants more. He’d like to claim all of 82 as his home and futilely chase cars and 18-wheelers for the rest of his days.
He’d come home to eat, of course, but he’s not interested in making our backyard his home.
We got Buster a little over two years ago as a puppy, and he’s been a spirited dog, to say the least.
When he was about a year-and-a-half, folks began telling us to “get him fixed.”
“That’ll calm him down,” they said.
So, we did just that.
That obviously wasn’t Buster’s problem. It did not calm him down, but it did provide two blissful nights without his barking in the wee hours of the morning from what used to be a sunroom (turned Buster’s domicile).
Buster’s abnormal aggression to anything with a running motor has kept us from being able to walk him.
“Get a tooth collar,” a dog expert suggested.
“I have one,” I replied. “He doesn’t care. He goes airborne at the sight of a running vehicle.”
“Oh, then I really don’t know what to do about that,” the expert said.
This fall, we got the electric fence.
I wasn’t crazy about it, but we had to try something new to try and keep that dog contained in the backyard.
When that didn’t work, I was just about to throw in the towel.
Here’s the reality. Society frowns on the notion of “rehoming” a dog.
“Dogs are like members of the family,” they say.
These folks don’t know how many family members I’ve disowned over the years.
On the other hand, it’s not fair to keep an Australian Shepherd mix cooped up in a sunroom for the rest of his life either. He needs to be able to run around, play and use his brain for something other than plotting his next move like Steve McQueen in the Great Escape.
Around Christmas time, I started doing research. There had to be another way.
And I found one.
I purchased a dog runner off the internet.
It comes with about 100 feet of cable, plenty for Buster to run back and forth.
We got it in the mail two weeks ago, and two weekends ago, my brother and I installed it. The only problem was that the cable was a little short and would not connect to the two trees I had planned as connectors.
So we tied one end to a tree and the other to the fence.
We brought Buster out and hooked him to the leash.
Everything seemed to be going as planned until Ellie and Sarah started driving their Frozen jeep around the yard.
Buster went nuts, and he snapped the board where his cable was wrapped.
This past weekend, my good friend Joe Forrester, who has a lot of years of experience containing dogs, came over and helped repair the cable, the fence and reinstall this thing around a more sturdy connector.
It’s been three days, and so far, so good.
We’ve left Buster outside during the day and at night, and he has not been able to escape the cable or his harness.
For those who are offended at the very thought of finding Buster a new stomping ground, there’s no way anyone can say I haven’t tried. And if I didn’t have to endure the tears of a 5-year-old and a 3-year-old every time the notion is brought up, Buster would probably be on a farm somewhere already.
Hopefully, these final efforts have paid off, and he’ll be our dog forever.
Something tells me that Buster is sitting in the backyard right now, bouncing a baseball against the walls of his mind, plotting his next escape.
