The Dog Blog: A digging kind of dog

Sunday, February 25, 2018

A digging kind of dog

A CLEAN LADY

MORE THAN 15 YEARS AGO, Lady was a young dog. I went into the backyard and couldn't find her; for a moment, I was puzzled.

Then I saw dirt flying up out of the ground.

Lady was digging her version of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel. Near the fence, she had dug a hole her width, length and height long. All I could see of Lady was her tail sticking out of the back of the hole, with dirt flying up behind her.

She was digging with her front paws and propelling the dirt out of the hole with her powerful hind legs.

I wasn't going to let her dig her way out of the yard (assuming that was her goal), but it was a struggle to get her out of there. I had to physically lift her out of the hole.

I found some rocks to fill the hole, then used a shovel and put most of the dirt back in. Then I tamped it down.

I don't know if she was upset about me stopping her work; I didn't care. I wasn't too thrilled about the dirty mess she'd made of herself, but I took her to the groomer to clean her up.

But the story didn't end here. Every time someone came to cut our grass, I reminded him about the hole. Lady's gone (Sept. 17, 2016), and the grass has long since covered the hole.

You can't tell that it was ever there. But I remember.

EMAIL: tgilli52@gmail.com TWITTER: EDITORatWORK