re: Who here has had their dog run away?

We've had a couple of them do it ... mostly males, one female.

One old male Texas Blue Heeler, probably one of my favorite all time dogs ... he was 14 years old and one day he said goodbye to us and left. Thanksgiving a year ago. Broke my heart ... but they will do that when they are getting old and want to go off and die.

ZZTop, a female Huskie, she was one hard headed bitch but one day she came to us, said goodbye, and disappeared. She was 14 as well. That was about four years ago.

This year's Masters Tourney, I work the tourney but we always have friends stay with us from out of town. We had this half husky, half border collie named Skipper, he was eight years old. He came and said goodbye to us when we were all sitting on the back porch that Thursday night ... then he was gone. He was bad about chasing the poon and nothing was going to keep him on the grounds. We've got ten acres of yard here, bordered with an invisible fence, AND a cattle fence, and he was one we had to keep a shock collar on ... but it never phased him when he decided he was going over the fence. He was stand offish to most people and sometimes aggressive ... but he strolled up on the back deck that night, walked around and let everyone at the party pet him ... came over to me and actually put his paws up in my lap for the first time ever .... looked me straight in the eyes, turned and walked to the stairs, took one last look back and me and he was gone.

Dogs are going to do what they want to do. Big dogs anyway. Littler dogs notsomuch in terms of running away, but the big dogs, when it is there time to hear the call of the wild they are gone.

We've got a lot of coyotes around here and I always fear mine running into coyotes ... I know Skipper had tangled with them on several occasions. And back when we rescued huskies ... oh man. We'd have as many as a dozen, sometimes more, huskies on one fenced in area of the back forty at a time when we were placing them in adoptive homes ... and the coyotes were no match for a pack of huskies, there were some serious fur flying blood letting run-ins with the huskies and the coyotes back in those days. But a single domesticated canine is no match for a pack of these coyotes.

Anyways, yeah, we've had to deal with it a few times but dogs are going to be dogs and there is no controlling them when they get out of your sight and decide to answer the call of the wild. I've been around them my whole life ... my mother was known as "The Dog Lady" when I was growing-up and well into her old age ... they even did a front page article on her in The State Newspaper here years ago about the 1000s of dogs she has rescued. So I've been around them, en masse, my entire life - we're serious dog people. Got a rescue pit bull that was dropped off back here on my property six years ago pregnant with 15 puppies, 13 of which lived and we found homes for all of them ... so I know about dogs. You're going to lose them every now and then. Especially the males when they get older. It's just a force of nature.