Rolling Dog Farm Blog

We have an open, home-style environment here, where the dogs have big fenced paddocks to run around in during the day.  (The various paddocks range in size from 1/2 acre up to 2 acres.)  In recent weeks the increasing snowpack has been pulling the fences down, providing an opportunity for enterprising escape artists to sneak through and, uh, go AWOL.

In truth, there’s only one escape artist — Travis the dog with a fused jaw.  When this scamp gets out, he takes off and disappears.  The last time he did this, two weeks ago, it was already dark and nearing zero degrees.  A couple of hours later, I finally found him a mile down the road and headed towards the highway.  It was four below zero by then, and yet he had no intention of heading home.  I think he felt like an Arctic explorer of some sort. 

I bundled him into the truck and drove him back to the ranch.  The next morning, rather than turn him loose for the day in the dog paddock, we put him in jail … where he will remain until the snow melts.  So he spends his days here, and at night he’s back inside Widget’s House.

Obviously he’s not too happy about this turn of events, but he makes the most of it.  He spends much of the time standing on top of the dog house in his jail cell, which makes him feel somewhat ‘above’ the other dogs … in spite of his incarceration.  Beth took this photo of the inmate the other day.

(Click on photo for larger image.)