Thursday 1 July 2010

Paddy can jump!

From the start Guinness was the jumping dog. Paddy would get through fences by squeezing under them, but Guinness would climb catlike up the fencing until he found a large enough space to get through.
This all changed on May 19th. Normal morning routine was in progress except that I had been so busy with breakfast I had not fed the dogs. Guinness was lying outside the door whining, so I assumed he was hungry. I finally had a chance to tend to the dogs and was a little surprised to find Paddy gone, especially as all the doors were closed. The only explanation was that he had jumped out of the window! This was confirmed seconds later when a guest came down and told me he had seen Paddy sniffing around on the front lawn. Alarm bells rang because there is nothing to stop the puppies running onto the A38 from the garden. Breakfast service came to a standstill, guests left the tables and a search party was formed. After 10 minutes (which felt like 30) we had not found him. So I again walked up to the main road and suddenly saw Paddy running at top speed down the driveway opposite, towards the busy main road. There was not an immediate gap in the traffic, and with mounting panic I eventually ran across just as he came to the entrance. Fortunately he saw me and swerved onto the pavement into my arms. If he had continued in a straight line he would have run under the wheels of a passing police car, the consequences of that do not bear thinking about. I could not be cross with him as I was so relived he was still alive.
Later on in the day I answered the front door and Paddy came too - he had jumped over the baby gate, which is supposed to stop them getting to the front of the house. His morning adventure seemed to have given him the confidence to defy all barriers.
2 days later I stupidly left the upstairs baby gate open whilst cleaning the bedrooms, unbeknown to me the puppies came up to explore. They went into a room I had serviced and jumped all over the bed with muddy feet. I came out of a different room to find Guinness wandering along the landing and expected to see Paddy following. But there was no sign of him. It was then that I discovered the mess they had made of my clean room, so I followed the muddy paw prints. Unbelieveably they led to the open window, and were also on the outside ledge. Paddy had jumped out of a first floor window! Heart pounding I raced downstairs expecting to find a very damaged dog in the flower bed. However he was lying quietly in the hallway. Carefully I felt him all over and he appeared to be unhurt. The only telltale sign was a very wet coat. Somehow he had fallen through the wet bushes without impaling himself and landed on his feet. He is a very lucky dog.