Lena

Wow, poor little neglected blog. I should start posting again, maybe it will curb my propensity to over post on Facebook. :) Anyway, that is neither here nor there when it comes to the title of this post. A little over a week ago, after a couple of visits to the ranch where she lived with Second Chance Rescue, we adopted Lena, a one year old chocolate lab/greyhound mix. She is what is known as a "spook". Feel free to look that up on google when it comes to dogs. But essentially it means, she's very timid and afraid of EVERYTHING. She needs love, attention, discipline, exercise and socialization to bring her to some sense of normalcy. SO, looking at stuff we've read, watched on tv, and been told, we've been trying to walk her twice a day for at least 10 minutes as part of exercise and getting her used to the world directly outside of our house.

So that brings us to the walk yesterday. Around 3:00 or so, as usual, I was trying to accomplish something that was a little much for the circumstances. Lena seems to do better when Joanie is on the leash with her and since Miguel works, I had to take the kids with me on the walk. So picture it, me, 7 1/2 months pregnant, (1) 45 lb dog, (1) 70lb dog, one crazy 2 year old Sam, and Katie. It's a little much. I have no free hands with which to hold on to Lena tighter. Up the street comes the school bus, out jumps the kids, Lena spooks, yanks on the leash and breaks it and I have no way to catch her. Once she realizes she's free, she's GONE. This dog runs like a horse, both in gait and speed. So I freak out, call the rescue group, drop the kids off at a neighbor's house, and start walking the neighborhood. David, Carolyn, and Jolyn from Second Chance drive out to help me find her as well as the entire neighborhood full of kids I've got helping me out. Props to everyone who helped and called when they saw her. We never would have gotten her back. We see her several times running by the house, but everytime she sees anyone around anywhere, she bolts. And by the way, it's the happiest I've ever seen her look.
So I'll spare you all the details of that whole part search, needless to say, she will come to no one. Even though I'm walking around carrying a pork roast. Seriously. She's last seen at 6:30pm running full speed AWAY from us.
At 11:30pm, we get a call from a neighbor, who read our email to the whole neighborhood, whose friend told her she saw a dog matching Lena's description at the Kroger the other side of a busy 4 lane road about 1 mile from the house. So Miguel being the awesome person he is, gets in the car and heads over to check it out. He doesn't find her at the Kroger, but in the Target parking lot further down the road. Once again, when he approaches her, she spooks and runs for the woods. Miguel gets back in the car and spots her on the side of the road, so he stops, starts to walk in that direction when a Roswell PD officer stops him to ask what's going on. Of course, I'm sure it looked odd, but once Miguel explained, the officer was super awesome and started to help look for her. All this chasing caused her to cross back over the busy 4 lanes of traffic, almost getting hit in the process. Eeeekkkk!!!!
She heads straight back for our neighborhood. And in what would be an impossible distance for me to cover in 5 minutes, Lena arrived in our front yard, right as Miguel pulled in, in his car. Every time she saw us, she would walk away, then come back. So I sent Joanie out to see if she could convince her to come back. They did a little play fighting, chased each other round for a few. I called Joanie back and low and behold, they both stopped, Lena started making a beeline for the door of the house and in she came with Joanie behind her. Without Joanie, I don't think we would have ever gotten her back in the house. All this was done in the dark btw and ended at 12:30am when she walked in the door. Part of her returning was a miracle and the other part was the super neon bright pink reflective collar I put on her last week. :) Lesson learned, she needs complete attention on her walks and definitely not at busy times of day.
She trusts us humans the least amount possible right now. Her whole life has been lived in shelters. And what other places she might have lived did very little to socialize her, in fact we're pretty sure they just traumatized her more. So she sits quietly right now in our bedroom, still recovering I think, from her 9 hour run around east Roswell. She needs a bath though, she smells like the creek in front of the house. :)I'm sure Miguel could fill you in better on the search at midnight last night, but I think I got the gist of it.