Our worst fear

When we got Belle in November, I decided that I was going to start clicker training her and Beau. Nothing major, just a click and treat for basic behaviors. Little did I know, this would save Belle in the future. More on that in a moment.

One of the things I do on every walk is stop on each corner of my neighborhood, say "stop" then click and then treat once they are relaxed. Within a few days they started anticipating the corners and would stop without me even saying anything. Success!

To give them more of a challenge I decided to stop on some corners, but not all. I have continued that on each walk ever since then.

On Saturday, our worst fear as a Greyhound owner became a reality. Belle slithered out the front door when a visitor arrived, and ventured out into the neighborhood.

Iva screamed "Scott, I need help, Belle got out of the house!"

My adrenaline kicked in, and I think I jumped from the second story of our house, down to the foyer and shot out the front door.

Whenever I think of a Greyhound getting out, my first thought is of a 40mph rocket leaving a trail of dust behind them. Fortunately in this instance, Belle was only jogging. She made it down the block of the common area in front of our house in less than 10 seconds. Much faster than I could have traveled in that same time. I'm glad she wasn't sprinting or she would have been much farther away.

Much to my surprise, she stopped on the corner! Not only did she stop, but she stopped, turned around and stared at me inquisitively. This allowed me to slowly approach on foot. She looked very scared and timid.

When I was about 15 yards away, an older gentleman in our neighborhood started driving down the street. I motioned for him to stop, because I knew the presence of his car would make Belle take off. He saw me, but ignored me and continued driving right to the corner where she was. Naturally, she took off again.... sigh. The whole neighborhood probably heard me cussing at him!

Belle didn't make it too much farther though. She was more interested in hiding at that point than running, so she found two minivans parked in driveway and hid behind them. At this point there were numerous cars driving by, and I was within 15ft, but she just wouldn't come to me. If I moved towards her, she moved away. If I called her to me, she moved away. I felt hopeless! However, I knew I had to remain calm at this point, or she would feed off my energy and run away.

I crouched down with my side towards her to take a less aggressive stance and gave her one last squawker call from about 10ft away. That was enough to make her slowly creep towards me with her tail between her legs.

Finally I could breathe again. All I could think about was her running miles and miles away.

But now I had her in my arms, and began the slow walk back to the house. Why was I carrying her? Because Houdini-Hound slipped out of her embroidered collar before she ran out of the house. She had zero identification on her. No cell phone number, no GPA tag, no nothing! Talk about worst case scenario!

After what seemed like forever, I made it back to the house on foot, in my socks, with a 56lb Greyhound in my arms. Talk about a workout! I collapsed onto the hardwood floors to catch my breathe. More like out of shape!

I can only imagine someone looking out of their house to see me carrying my large dog down the street thinking "Isn't that what leashes are for!?"

After 2-3 hours of feeling sick to my stomach over the whole incident, I felt fortunate that she was back home safely. It was a very frightening few minutes.

So now we have new procedures in place for people coming to the door. Both hounds must stay in the living room in the carpeted area and may not greet the visitor until they have reached the carpet too.

They will be going through visitor boot camp over the next couple of weeks, until I am certain this will never happen again.

Everyone take a moment to hug your hounds! They'll love you for it :)

Editor's note: Clearly she needs some more squawker training because she didn't respond to it at all out in the open. She responds to it just fine in the backyard, and about 50% of the time at the dog park.