Aftermath and analysis

SUMMARY: In which Human Mom dons her sleuthing hat and tries hard not to feel horribly guilty.

The master bedroom has a walk-in closet with sliding doors. There's a bed in the corner there--put it there for Tika one night a long time ago and she used it for a while but then stopped. Chip often snoozes there, at least for a while, at bedtime or after.

This is where I found him, way back at the end of May, on a hot evening after I had been out, nearing heatstroke after hiding here from the Dang Fireworks. The windows were closed because it was hot out. The room was hot. No air movement. And no water within reach.  But apparently it was the best place to get away from the noise.

Since then, I've had a water bowl in the master bath (not the closet), just in case.

On the 3rd, all the windows were open to let the evening air in because it wasn't quite that hot. Evidence said that he had in fact sought shelter here for a while: The bed had a large wet spot on one side. Either he peed there or he lay there, panting and drooling, which stressed dogs do.

At some point, probably because the windows/drapes were open, he realized that this was not a safe place. I'm guessing that he first went to the other end of the hallway to the renter's room, as it was the only other door open on that floor. That's where he tore apart the miniblinds and left smears of blood everywhere on the blinds, windowsill, windowframe, and window.

I was sure that he must have sliced open his pads on the narrow metal slats of the blinds.

Apparently when he got the window fully open and pushed out the screen, he thought better of it, thank goodness, and headed back into the hallway.

Bloody footprints led down the main stairs and after that it's hard to tell where first, but I'd guess across the carpet into the living room and to the front window to try to get out there. Bloody footprints then went into the dining room, through the kitchen, back out to the front hall, and down the minor steps to the lowest floor. There were bloody footprints on the carpet into my office, and into the downstairs bath and laundry room, and then the damage to the doorframe to the garage door.

Basically he went into every available room in the house looking for solace and didn't find it.

Finally went out the doggie door, which says that he truly felt the world was ending, because when I'm here and there are a lot of fireworks, he will not go out into the yard. It must have taken a tremendous act of bravery.

I don't know whether he tried any other ways of getting out... the east gate, which he's periodically been digging under and I've been refilling, was untouched. There aren't a lot of ways for him to try jumping the fences. which are 7 feet (2.13 meters) and are reasonably new and pretty solid, although I did check all along it for holes underneath or loose/damaged boards or signs of toenails on the wood. Found a few here and there, but could've been from dogs chasing squirrels.

It's possible that he tried climbing onto this pile of pipes, which used to be raised on supports at either end, where the remaining board and pipes are.

However, this is the smoking gun: The attention that he paid to the west gate. He clearly worked at it for a while. All along the bottom, there's this (that's about a one inch gap at the bottom above the concrete):

Then this, along and just above the horizontal board at the upper area of the gate:

If he had hit just to the right, he could've opened the gate and gone out, but I doubt that happened. I think that he gained purchase on that top board, dug rear claws into the cross-board, and went up and over the top.

He's just a little dog (not quite 20" (50cm) at the shoulder) and the gate is 7' at the peak (over 6' at the low points). But he is agile.

And then he vanished.

Skip forward to the early evening of July 4th. Chip has been home with me since just before 1:00. He's lying there sleeping.  I receive two phone calls about 20 minutes apart from people who have seen my dog running down Blossom Hill (a major 40 MPH thoroughfare) and saw my posters. I explained that I had my dog, and they both said that's odd, it looks just like him, down to the red collar and all.

So I am revising what I think happened on the night of the 3rd: The "white dog" that people reported being near the VTA station over a mile southwest of me around one a.m. was not Chip--it was the same dog who was running down Blossom Hill the next evening.  Because that's exactly where I was afraid that Chip had been headed (when I thought it was him) if he had continued in the same direction. Which means that Chip didn't travel *quite* as far and had probably headed northeast from the very beginning--the direction in which we picked him up.

As it turns out, his only injuries were a deep but open, not-too-wide scrape on one knee (he's showing you where it is here) and one damaged toenail--I could see the blood in it still when he got home. No damage to his pads at all, thank goodness.

On the 4th, he was clearly one exhausted doggie. Lay around all day, never going out into the yard unless I went. In fact, stuck within a few feet of me wherever I went all day. In the yard, he showed some interest in the toy that I threw for Boost, but trotted a couple of steps and then stopped. Probably very sore from all that running and traveling.

Starting in the late afternoon, I played a long fireworks video on my computer. Didn't seem to bother him at all, so I just gradually upped the volume, what the heck.  (This is not the first time 've done this, but mostly it was after his initial scare a month back.)

In the evening, when we started hearing the first few booms, I went out onto the porch with all 3 dogs and a ton of chopped-up hot dogs and we did tricks and Chip got a treat every time he alerted to a boom. Eventually it was too much for him and we went inside and that tiny effort was over for the evening.

He paced a bit--from one room to another, then stood there waiting for the next sound, then moved again. Often to stand next to me, then to leave again. I'd pet him when he was near and talk to him quietly about the loud booms. Around 8:30, he finally wanted to climb into my lap.

So we sat there like that for a while; I draped the corner of a lightweight afghan over his ears and eyes and he seemed to relax more.

When we went up to bed shortly thereafter, I firmly shut the windows and drapes, set up a laptop playing the fireworks video. It didn't sound a lot like real fireworks, but it masked all but the loudest sounds, and actually worked like white noise for me.

I lay down on my side, invited chip up next to me, and we nestled like two spoons. I draped the corner of my comforter over his ears and eyes, my arm over his side and back leg, and we both settled quickly and slept.

Now everything's pretty much back to normal except that I'm concerned about leaving him home alone.  The evening of the 5th stayed quiet until about 9:30, and I dared to hope that that meant that everyone had used up their fireworks, but nooooo--started in again, and went until 1-frigging-thirty in the morning, off and on.   We made do once again, but it wasn't as intense and Chip didn't really want to spoon again and i didn't play the fireworks again and all was, well, as well as could be for the booms outside.

I hope that he never again has to have an adventure like this. Nor I.