Lilah Gets Arrested

It's always the quiet ones.

Lilah, for those not familiar with her, is a kind of goofy, very affectionate basset hound we found a year and a half ago on Craig's List. Her former owner told us she loves babies (mmm, not so much), was training to be a therapy dog (if she could spend all day having people pet her she'd think she'd died and gone to heaven), and was raised on a diet of raw chicken every third day (we quickly remedied that). She did not tell us that Lilah is an escape artist.

Not that we didn't find out well in advance of today's criminal activity.

After she had lived with us for a few months in Long Beach, Lilah puzzled us greatly by visiting our neighbors while we were out at the Santa Ana Science Center for the day. Apparently cell phones don't work in the Santa Ana Science Center, because it wasn't until we were on our way home that I picked up the message from the neighbors. Lilah was in their yard, they informed us. Audrey, they continued reassuringly, was still in ours.

How could we have left the gate unlocked? we wondered. And why hadn't Audrey escaped as well? (She was not, at the time, twice Lilah's size, and may even have been a bit smaller.)

We arrived home to a locked gate, a pleased Lilah, and a bummed Audrey. Sucks to be her.

Hmm, we thought. A mystery. Surely Lilah couldn't fit her bulldog-ish shoulders through the small gaps in our gate. On the other hand, we couldn't quite figure out who had locked it after her, since locking the gate required a key. Perhaps our landlord had stopped by unannounced, as was his wont, and left his feral children in our yard to play? It wouldn't be the first time, although it would be the first time they had visited without managing to unroll gardening tape all over the yard, scatter dog kibble up and down the walk, tie ropes in strange places with unfathomable knots, and generally leave their mark for us to clean up.

Much as we resisted the idea that our gate couldn't keep in a bow-legged basset hound, we had to concede defeat the following weekend when she made it to the next block before someone took her in and called us.

I still marvel when I remember the tiny spot where the curved ornament of the gate could maybe -- just possibly -- admit a limber basset hound. And then I caught her preparing to do it again, and we had to put up chicken wire, which didn't look great but saved us further forays about the neighborhood to fetch her.

It's much easier to escape our yard here in Asheville.

The fence people are supposed to show up any day to actually enclose it, but until then we have craftily rigged up a lawnchair propped sideways across the stairs to allow the girls some fresh air on the deck (but not, alas, toilet access, which still requires my supervision). The fence, by the way, was supposed to be one of our top priorities when we moved in. But we were delayed by Hubby's brief but enthusiastic flirtation with an electric fence (still in place after he sliced through it with the lawnmower, turning it into an unreturnable and very expensive boundary-marker) and the local tradition among fencing companies of not returning calls requesting an estimate.

Prior to the lawn chair barrier (which, I hasten to point out, works just fine on Audrey), we used an even more ingenious combination of the Weber kettle and an aluminum garbage can filled with about 25 pounds of charcoal. This arrangement required me to balance a 20-pound baby in one arm while dragging a 25-pound trash can across the deck every time I let the girls into the yard, so I wasn't entirely pleased with our solution to the fence problem, however temporary.

And then Lilah got out anyhow.

That first call came from an accounting business that backs up to the houses across the street from us. Apparently Lilah wandered through some yards and showed up at their back door. From what I could piece together, she was welcomed with open arms.

"She's been lying in our boss's office in front of the T.V. getting her belly scratched," the sweet blonde woman who brought her out informed me.

I decided there was no point in explaining the concept of positive reinforcement to this woman because I was simply going to make sure Lilah didn't escape again.

I didn't do a very good job of it. Just a couple of weeks later I got a call from an insurance company on the same street. This time it took me a bit longer to find Lilah because she had been picked up on the far side. This is a scary fact to anyone who knows the street because cars drive very fast down it and . . . I don't want to think about it and I really wish Lilah hadn't made so many friends at the insurance company because it guaranteed that she would try to go back.

Did I mention that she can contort her body like the magician's assistant who gets cut in half? I believe she would be perfectly comfortable, her head sticking out of that box while she curls her hind legs back up against her chest inside a space half her size.

So, of course, she made a run for it again today. It was another beautiful almost-70-degree day, the air was fresh, the sky was blue, and I thought I'd do the girls a favor by letting them hang out on the deck while I walked The Boy to school. They are, after all, reasonably big dogs, and this is a reasonably safe neighborhood, so I felt confident that no one would walk in our wide open back door in the forty minutes I was gone.

I was happily walking the empty stroller home (amazing how many people don't seem to consider that I might have a perfectly good reason to be pushing an empty stroller down the street) when my cell phone rang. It was Hubby.

"I just got a message that we're supposed to call some number or the police are going to take one of the dogs to the pound," he said, sounding understandably distraught.

"I'm walking, I can't write a number down," I huffed, feeling suddenly crushed by the fact that I desperately needed to get some work done and could not spend my time getting one of the dogs out of the pound. I hoped Hubby would say he'd take care of it.

He didn't. "I'll call the answering machine and leave it there," he said. I would have liked to tell him what I thought of this plan.

I didn't. "There are some people in front of our house with Lilah," I said instead as I turned the corner.

Those people turned out to be two police officers.

"Are you the owner?" one of the officers asked. Apparently she had spent enough time with Lilah to know that the affection I was receiving didn't mean a thing and was possibly even less heartfelt than the affection she had received upon their meeting.

I admitted that I was.

"I'm glad we found you," she said. "I sure didn't want to take her to the pound."

"The engraving on her tags is terrible," I babbled. "It's so hard to see my cell phone number." Why is it that I felt the need to explain why I am not quite as irresponsible as I seem when I was, after all, irresponsible enough to let her get out in the first place?

"That's your cell phone number?" The officer looked at me sharply.

"Um . . ." Of course they had called. Of course I had left my cell phone on the stroller sitting on the front porch of The Boy's school while I sat inside with him trying to make him believe that it's safe and fun there and it would be an excellent idea to loosen his death grip on my arm.

"I'm afraid I'll have to write you a warning," the officer said kindly.

She was so kind that I decided to have a conversation with her and her partner. A very stupid conversation.

"My last basset hound got arrested too," I laughed. "One day there was a knock on the door and they were checking for licenses--"

"Is she licensed?" The officer paused in writing up my warning, her pen poised to check off yet another infraction.

"She's licensed in California," I lied. If you are an authority connected with the California Bar, you did not just read that last sentence. "We just moved here a couple of months ago."

It actually turned out pretty well. She gave me two forms and specific instructions on licensing the girls, which was a lot easier than figuring it out myself.

Still, Lilah has a criminal record, Audrey is a notorious chicken thief, and I can't help but be worried about the bad influence they are having on their little brother. His admiration for them is apparent already. He chews on their bones, samples the food in their dishes, and helps himself to their water bowl.

And he was, after all, a dog for Halloween. Hound behavior can not be far behind.