"Sidney, Get Back Here!!!"

Not long after we'd moved into the first house we'd bought when my son was about a year old, in the middle of the afternoon one day I heard the next door neighbor yelling at someone, not sounding at all happy, and went to look out the window and see what was going on.  Whoever he was yelling at was in huge trouble, from the sounds of it.

I see the neighbor shouting and running towards the other end of the block, where a little long-haired dachsund is running as fast as his little short legs can carry him, while the neighbor's yelling, "Sidney, get back here, you little @$#!" and "Sidney, you son of a &*#$@, stop running from me!"  and several other varieties along the same line.  I'm watching this, and thinking to myself that Sidney wasn't getting very far, and that pretty soon he'd have to stop to pee, because he was so excited at being free.  Sure enough, he stopped at a telephone pole and the neighbor caught up to him, picked him up and took him back to the house.  I figured that was the end of that.

But NOOOOO!!!! Sidney, apparently, took great glee in escaping from the house and yard whenever possible, and had his own little escape routes from both.  I think he did it on purpose, just to annoy his owner, because he definitely wasn't scared of getting caught.  It seemed more like he just wanted attention.  Sidney would escape at least once a week, sometimes twice, and I'd hear the neighbor hollering at him in the same way and chasing him.

Once we'd gotten to know the neighbor and Sidney a bit better, when I'd hear the yelling from Sidney's escape, I'd go out and call Sidney myself.  Sidney, it seemed, had a "thing" for the ladies, and would come every time I'd call him.  The neighbor (who, by the way, was the same one that looked around the corner when my son locked me out!) would complain about what a suck-up the dog was with the ladies, but he was still grateful that he didn't have to chase him any more!

I took great satisfaction in being able to get Sidney to come to me, but not him, mainly because it seemed to annoy him that his dog ignored him, and it was so easy for me to get him to listen.  Somehow, it seemed right after his comments when I was locked out.

So there!