The Great Dog Escape of Snowmaggedon

The weekend of February 6 and 7 of 2010 was Snowmaggedon here on the East Coast. A week earlier we had 12 inches of snow, which is highly unusual where we are, so close to the ocean, and then a week later we had a déjà vu load of snow dumped on us. Our dog, a little Schnauzer, likes to play in the snow when it’s only an inch or two, but when it’s higher than his shoulders he doesn’t want to even step off the porch. Since the snow’s been here and deep for a week, he developed a case of Doggie Cabin Fever.

When we take him outside to the porch we usually put him on a tether, but since he hasn’t been inclined to go anywhere and the driveway was barricaded with a fresh layer of a kind snow more appropriately called “drifting slush”, we just let him outside on the porch with us while we had coffee and watched it snow. He had had enough, though: he squirted off the porch and went bounding through the white stuff, hell bent for leather, going somewhere, anywhere.

He made it out to the road before he realized, we later surmised, that no, this was not a suitable day for a little jaunt through the neighborhood, that running off was a bad, bad idea. Apparently, his little food-oriented brain couldn’t spawn the idea of turning around: the first house he saw was across the street, so he headed straight for that. I had gone back inside to get my boots to give chase, so before I got away from our house he had already made it to the neighbor’s porch, where he barked with indignation and pawed at their door. (The little prince was probably wondering why his human subjects inside hadn’t opened the door with his first bark.) Shirley opened the door and brought him inside, first wrapping him in a towel (which he happens to hate) and then picking him up (which he hates even more.) Although he barely knows the neighbor, he didn’t growl or fuss at all, just whimpered and told her lies about how we were mistreating him at home. Cold and surprisingly wet, he had completely surrendered to a virtual stranger.

So, PeeWee’s Great Escape lasted maybe two minutes and got him about 100 feet from his unbearably torturous home with the warm fireplace and everlasting supply of dog cookies. Yes, though a failure, his trek across the white wasteland all the way across the street was evidence of his desperation, so he had to console himself with at least having made a valiant attempt to escape our tyranny. Traumatized, he spent the rest of the day quietly curled up on his blanket or on one of our laps, looking forlorn and behaving generally pitifully. Poor, poor dog.

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