Brindy the runaway min-pit

Brindy the mini pitbull. Brindy the dingbat. Brindy the dumb runaway dog. We adopted Brindy about 6 years ago. She's the result of someone breeding designer dogs via pit bulls crossed with Boston terriers. I personally call the breed 'dingbat' and you have to see both her ears erect to see why. Brindy came with costs. Heavy costs. 700 dollars to put her through heart worm treatment with a 50/50 chance of survival. The treatment gave her premature graying in the face but she lived.

Brindy has a problem. She's a runaway dog. She is in love with the idea of running as hard as she can as far as she can. She doesn't pause to sniff anything until she's at least six blocks away. She's learned that someone will be trying to catch her and she's learned all the tricks to that.

Offering a car ride used to be the cinch. She would jump right in for a car ride. But she learned that meant going straight home. So to hell with that idea. Her newest trick, since she learned we will follow her with the car, is to go to the railroad tracks and avoid us that way. The only thing she hasn't learned is to avoid strangers. She will go right up to other people except that they are afraid of her and won't help us catch her.

This is why her address and my phone number are on her tags. But recently, she managed to force off her address tag from her collar and it was on the table when she decided to run again. Most of the time, she dashes out the front door and she's very good at picking her time. So we kennel her if we having pizza delivered or company over. Today, she got out through the backyard fence.

"But wait, don't you play with your dog or do anything with her?"

Why yes we do. This dog gets to go out and play ball an average of 8 times a day. If you don't take her out when she wants, she will stare lasers through your head until you do. She's a very spoiled and extremely demanding while completely disobedient dog. She's ridiculous with it and never satisfied. My son was throwing ball for her as I pulled up in the driveway from dropping my wife off at work. That's when she decided ball just wasn't enough for her.

Now for the other problem. As you can see by the pictures we have a large gate for part of our fenced in back yard. It's badly warped and I've had to force it to the ground with long metal stakes. I've had to tie it off with wire and strap boards to and bricks to block the end off.

It doesn't work. She can push aside everything I put at the corner and wiggle out and I can't stop her. My son stared dumbfounded as teens sometimes do, instead of running to stop her. I couldn't get out of the car fast enough, and she was gone. It sure looks like she can't be trusted to play her favorite game anymore. By the way, we rent.

Yep, we rent and there is zero chance that this gate will ever be corrected. No one has cared for at least 20 years or so as that tree grew into the side of the house and warped it. I'm just glad that's the shed built into the house that is being destroyed by the two trees growing into it. You can even see the fence post that's been swallowed by the base of the tree. The electric company hates us because they can't bring their trucks into the yard to fix transformers when they blow twice a year. Too bad so sad.

So that's the situation. You might say, 'gee, she's so smart to learn all that'. No. She's stupid.

Stupid to run away and risk her life possible loss of the family that's put hundreds to thousands of dollars into her health and living. Stupid to run off from her favorite ball to do all that. Today we had to chase her to the point of her own physical exhaustion in high southern heat. To me, that's stupid. Not smart.

One day we will be moving on from here. If we still have a dog at that time (if she doesn't get herself killed before then) we will seek a home with a really good fence. Until then, we do our best to contain her, but her ball playing days may be at an end for a while if she really prefers to play escape instead.