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A Boo Boo Story

CH. Samabel Steel Magnolia

Boo Boo was a very independent and determined dog. She would spend hours wading in the 100 gallon fish pool on the terrace with the sole purpose of killing anything that swam there. We tried having a nice collection of Comet goldfish, but one by one, she eliminated them. She never ate them,  just laid them out on the edge for me to remove. So I gave up on fish but to my surprise frogs appeared on their own and took up residence. There is no body of water nearby, and I am still puzzled how they came. However, at the end of each summer there would be no frogs in the pond. Then, come spring they would appear and the games began. Her stalking tactic was not subtle. She simple stomped around and around in the water and barked loudly until some hapless amphibian leapt up and she nabbed it. Boo Boo's hard headedness never wavered.

Since Boo Boo was my first puppy and the dog family was growing,  I opted to create paradise for the dogs by fencing in over an acre of land off the house. With the house on top of a steep wooded hill, this made for great vermin hunting and the dogs loved it. I installed a dog door and my house was their house. Now, you would think that the fact that they could not see from one end of the yard to the other  would satisfy their terrier needs for encompassing the universe at all costs. Not Boo Boo. It took her about a week to fully investigate every inch of the new yard and then she decided to go beyond my new ( and expensive ) barrier. One afternoon I was in the barn doing chores and happened to glance down to the house. There was Boo Boo teetering on the top of a section of four foot high dog wire. I yelled at her and she simply bounded off the top of the wire and ran up the hill to see what I wanted.

I was sure this was a one-time deviation of the norm for civilized dog behavior but I was wrong. In a few days, she had all the other dogs following her escape plan. I watched in amazement as they scaled the fence by literally walking up the wire using toes and teeth. Once at the top, they hurled their bodies over and presto - off and running!

So I consulted various dog friends including some good-old-boy coon hound breeders, and they all suggested hot wiring the whole affair. Armed with a plan, I purchased miles of wire, bags of little plastic insulators and a solar current generator. This was going to be first class and never have to be done again. It took two days to get the new strand of wire on the fencing and the solar panel in place. Then I waited.

The dogs knew I had done something drastic for my mutterings of "rotten little terrorists" between wire crimping and hammering kept them anchored on the deck watching from a distance. For two days, peace reigned and then one afternoon late, I heard a resounding yelp from the far corner of the yard and I gloated. ( It was that same feeling you get when you hear the mouse trap snap in the kitchen cupboard. ) I waltzed out to see how they were enjoying my booby trapped fence.

Well, Boo Boo's mother, Rosie, apparently had been zapped and she was trotting back and forth about 20 feet from the fence growling with every stride. I tried to console her that this really was for her naughty daughter but she just barked and high-tailed it to the house. Boo Boo, on the contrary, seemed quite pleased with herself. She was just sitting about two feet from the wire as if nothing had happened. This was too good to be true.

Now, I was totally confident that the contraption worked fine and not to worry. The little buggers were not going to escape!

Peace reigned for about a year. I diligently pruned vines that wanted to climb onto the wire short-circuiting the system, and sighed every time I heard the telltale "click" of the solar box sending its current around the loop. Periodically, I braved touching it myself just to make sure it worked. Then I resorted to a little wire that I could create a spark if it was hot. Confidence was my middle name.

Then one summer evening I was lounging on the deck with the dogs nearby when I noticed that one was missing. Boo Boo was not there and when I called she did not appear. Even the magic word "cookie" had no effect. Now I decided, I must be mistaken so I checked the house. Just as I finished poking into the last closet, I heard her barking outside.

She was barking alright, but she was a good 1/4 mile away in the woods! I could not believe my ears. I flew down the trail, leash and horn in hand to catch her. When I caught up to her she was having a wonderful time leaping and barking up an oak tree. Sure enough, way up on a branch was a raccoon. Boo Boo's eyes were crossed with excitement and around and around the tree she went. Finally I corralled her and dragged her unceremoniously to the house.

Now I was panicked. How did she get past a barrier suitable for a 3000 pound bull? Once again, I checked every inch of the perimeter for breaks or a ground-out. Then I checked the solar box. Hmmmmm......I said. There was no juice and no damage. So I read the fine print in the instructions I had saved and found that if it were overcast for so many days you are dead. It had been really overcast for three days and now it seemed that three was the limit. Boo Boo could hear when it was dead and simply wiggled up the fence.

But there wasn't enough space between the "hot" line and the fence itself.....3 1/2 inches to be precise. Sure enough, late the next afternoon thoughts of raccoons overpowered Boo Boo and she headed down to the fence. I watched to see what she would do and without any hesitation she climbed up the wire, scootched between the "hot" line and the fencing and over she went. I retrieved her once again.

The sun came out the next morning and after about an hour, my line was charged again. The resolution dashed all fears of another Boo Boo escape and I went about life a usual.

A month or so later in the late fall, a Bye day ( unscheduled hunting day ) was called and I gleefully readied my horse and headed over to the appointed place for a morning of fox hunting. Riding to hounds is exhilarating whether you are standing still listening to the pack in full cry or galloping along keeping up with the dogs.  Today was perfect weather and since my dogs were penned in their yard, I was thinking of nothing but the joy of the day.

We roaded the hounds from kennels through the neighborhood and headed into the forest not far from my house.  For the next 30 minutes hounds poked around in the thickets bordering the heads that run through the country while we walked along nearby. Soon we were up on a ridge between two heads soaking up the sunshine and watching the hunstman on a lower trail close to a very thick cover.

Suddenly, the huntsman yelled in his inimitable British accent, "Good God, it's Claudia's dog!" I could not believe my ears, and then I could not believe my eyes. Way down on the trail running in the middle of the pack of foxhounds was Boo Boo. I could tell even from that distance that it was her and I nearly died. While I was getting hideous looks from the powers that be, the huntsman was blowing his horn and cracking his whip to get his hounds to come back to him and ignore Boo Boo.

He was terrified that Boo Boo would wince with 30 foxhounds around her, and that could have been her end. She already looked like a fox, only missing a tail, and he was certain some of the hounds were suspicious. Foxes do not smell at all like dogs ( they smell like mild skunk ) but in the excitement of the moment, the mob mentality could have taken over.

What he did not know was that I had trained her to come to the horn and  crack of the whip. So the more he tooted and the more he cracked his whip, the faster she went towards him with the whole pack around her.

I was mortified. There I was on my horse watching it all unfold and all I could do was call her and hope to Hell she would come to my voice. All my friends swear I was yelling "come to mommy" but I think they are making that up. Boo Boo finally heard me and turned up the hill to my horse. Then I trotted off with her running behind and got her home. I was totally humiliated and mad because she could have been killed, but I wanted to finish the morning. So I popped her into the kennel run off the barn which was 6 foot wire with wire over the top, and remounted my horse.

I finally caught up to everyone where I apologized profusely and was admonished half heartedly. The incident had scared everyone, but since nothing bad happened pretty soon it was the tale to be told. To this day, our huntsman laughs and says she was the only terrier to ever hunt with the Hounds, albeit she was not invited!

There is one more story in Boo Boo's history with the hot wire. This time the solar box had apparently died for good and I did not know it. Since Boo Boo would take to staying home for long spells at a time - and if she didn't climb out, no one else bothered - I sort of forgot to keep things in tip top shape. Boo Boo had gotten out once in the previous weeks but she only came around to the kitchen door, so I was lazy in my maintenance.

It was early March and the forest managers were planning a controlled burn of a large tract of woods right next to me. This in itself will add gray hairs to your head and I still have no faith in experts telling me everything will be fine. Fire is fire and man doesn't do well in it. So, when the weather was right with no wind and sinking temperatures, men and trucks appeared and set off in all directions into the woods. Their plan was to burn small patches into themselves thus controlling the spread and speed of the burn. The idea was to remove litter from the forest floor and allow certain plants to reseed. ( That is an entire two hour lecture on wierd plants that I am not going into )

So as night set in the sky lit up in all directions. I can tell you that small fires of that number over that size area looked like the whole world was turning into a krispy. Furthermore, all of it was just yards from my property. I was a nervous ninny. Then the terror really hit home. Boo Boo was gone.

I tore around the house looking, then all over the yard but she was gone. I ran down to the bottom of the hill and called and called. Then I got the horn and blew and blew. She never appeared. By this time I was terrified and furious at the fire people. Somehow this was all their fault. And of course it was. She had hopped the fence to go and see who the perpetrators were that were wandering all over "her" forest. So I jumped in my truck and charged into the forest and flames to find her. I found several firebugs ( they go around with small flame throwers torching patches of straw and leaves ) and finally found the person in charge.

My barrage of expletives deleted had no effect on the poor man other than to make him move his chaw from one side of his face to another. I was livid and heartbroken. I knew if she were in the maze of fires she would be trapped and die. Furthermore, they had just lit the entire perimeter between her yard and the wilderness.  She was trapped for sure. I rationalized the smoke would get her before the flames and that she would not suffer, but I could picture finding her frizzled body the next day somewhere on that hillside. Unable to do anything more, I went back to the house and stood on the deck staring into the orange night hoping for the sight of a little scared dog running home.

The fires burned themselves out over the next two hours and there was still no sign of Boo Boo. Every few minutes I went out into the back yard, then the front, then the side hoping she would come trotting out of the dark but the little terrier who hunted with the hounds was not to be seen. I was sure she was a gonner.

Then I heard a funny noise at the kitchen door. It wasn't a bark or anything, but rather a little raspy noise. I suspected a raccoon was rummaging around and switched on the floodlights. To my amazement and joy it was Boo Boo! She was trying to bark but had no voice because of the smoke she inhaled, and she looked awfully ragged but she was wagging her tail and rushing to come in. I looked down at her sooty face as she panted with exhaustion and realized she didn't have quite the coat she had left with. I could only image her ordeal running in a maze of fires and cut off from the way home. Apparently she had run through flames and had parts of her coat singed off. She smelled totally of smoke and burnt fur. She consumed half a dish of water and headed straight for her favorite chair in the living room, soot and all.

She had no ill effects of her near death night, but she gave up fence climbing after that. In fact, she never attempted or even looked like she would attempt climbing the wire again. Fortunately, as the generations came alone, she did not teach them and I have taken the "hot" fence down. Now the regular fence is covered in honeysuckle and jasmine making for an impenetrable border around the yard.

Boo Boo lived for many more years as the fierce hunter of frogs and chaser of squirrels, but only in her own yard.