Home Life - The Yard

Admittedly, the yard is beautiful. It's very private as there is a 9 foot tall evergreen hedge surrounding the  property.  but it's not as Swissy friendly as I would like...yet. There is no fence and Mr. Opportunity, as I like to call Emmett, can squeeze himself through amazingly small spaces. For instance, the other day, I was outside with him on the leash. He had an upset tummy and was eating grass along the inside of the hedge. Well, he decides that the grass looking better on the other side of the hedge looked better. See the opening in the bottom of the hedge just above Emmett's head in the photo? Yeah, that one....squeezed right through.


Now, I tried to coax him back through the head the same way he'd come. Being a scaredy Swissy, he tried, but decided the branches were in the way. Yes, I know the branches were there when he went through, but now he won't go near them. And I have nothing in my pocket to bribe him to come back the way he'd come. So, now I'm on one side of the hedge with leash in hand and Emmett is sitting pretty on the other side. The hedge is about two feet thick. Perhaps, I can crawl under it, after all, my 100 pound Swissy got through (remember, he can magically make himself tiny when the need arises) and he is a wee bit smaller than myself. I get down to the ground as low as possible, grumbling, and attempt to do a military style crawl through the dirt beneath the hedge. I couldn't make it.

Now, while I'm sitting on one side and Emmett is happily sitting on the other side, staring at Bo, the golden mix who is inside his fence barking his head off at this intruder who has appeared out of no where in his yard. My choices are to sit here for a while, listening to Bo's barking, and hope that Emmett builds up the courage to come back through the hedge, or tell Emmett to stay, jump off the retaining wall and run like crazy down the inside of our hedge, out to the street, down the other side of the hedge to the neighbors yard and hope that Emmett has not run down the hill to taunt the penned in Bo. I lie on my back in the grass to think it over. It's very nice grass, BTW. The sun was shining, which in my short experience in La Serena, was not something to take for granted. Oh, and did I mention that there was a Hindu baby naming ceremony that I was going to that had to take place between 11 and 12 that morning and it was 1030 and I hadn't showered yet?

I enjoyed my 15 seconds of contemplation in the grass and decided to try a blind "stay" with Emmett. There is really no traffic to speak of here and the area has a huge fence around it so if he broke, he wasn't going far. Especially with Bo going crazy about 30 feet away. At this point, Emmett was just staring at him. No hackles raised. Just staring. I think his tummy was just too upset for him to do much of anything. So, I tell him to "stay" and pray that our obedience and agility training would work.

I hopped down off that wall and ran as fast as these short little former soccer playing knee aching 43-year old legs could run. Down the inside of the hedge, hard right turn, up the hill on the outside of the hedge, around the corner....he's just sitting there. Staring at Bo. I get to him say "ok" and he walks back to the house with me as if it was nothing.  I look at him on the walk and think, how did he ever squeeze through there? A little bit of Swissy magic, I think.