I lost one of my Basenjis today when she was able to push open and get out the front door. She ran out into traffic and that was it. I let down my guard one time in 9 years and I lost my best friend. A 5 second mistake from all the stress in life causing a rough morning has led to a day of tears and massive feelings of guilt.
I had a basenji once named Q-tip. Hard headedest fucking dog I've ever seen. He grew up with my shepherd and when she died, he suddenly got very close to me. Like his goal in life was to have as much skin contact with me as possible at all times. I let him sleep on the bed and he'd run me off the bed because every time I moved during the night he'd push up on me and I'd move the other direction. The fucker would purposely shit in the house to punish me. Anyway, after the shepherd died, he started escaping my yard. I had range fencing, which is a wire fence where the holes get bigger up higher. This bastard figured out he could climb up about 4 levels and get out easily. Then he went on a diet so he could slip through at a lower level. One day the dog catchers finally caught up with him and he went to the hooskow. When I picked him up they told me they'd been after him for months, but he always gave them the slip. They also told me he was lucky he'd never been flattened because he often darted across the highway with reckless abandon. I was like, bullshit, he's always been in the yard when I got home. Once they knew where I lived, I started getting notices on my door constantly saying my dog was out, but he was always there. Eventually I talked to them again and they said when they were chasing him, he would hit the fence at a dead run, make a little jump and slide right though the fencing about 3 levels up from the ground. So I had to start chaining him up and that was ugly. He did not like that.
Then I got another puppy named blackjack who was half fox terrier and half patterdale terrier. I figured Q-tip was getting out because he was lonely. Once the new pup was old enough, I'd chain them both up outside and when I got home I always found their chains wrapped around each other because they'd been playing all day. After a few days of this I decided I needed to get a kennel on saturday, but in the meantime I shortened their chains to try to keep them from getting wrapped up. Got home that night and blackjack had wrapped his chain around the q-tip's neck and broke his neck. So yeah, talk about feeling guilt for one fucking mistake. After all those close calls that I didn't even know about for months on end.
Fucking basenji's are probably the smartest dog breed out there, but they're so hard headed you can't really train them. You just sort of come to an agreement with them. The best line I ever heard about them was that you don't train them, you have to convince them that they want to do the thing you want them to do. But you said you have multiple basenji's so I'm not telling you anything you don't already know.
Losing a pet is rough, but as a pet owner you have to come to terms with the fact that you're going to bury them. The joy they give when they're with you outweighs the sadness when you lose them. Wife and I keep a pack of 3-5 dogs at all times. We're down to 3 now so we need to start looking for another soon. The 2 youngest are 2 and 1 and we want them to get a little older first, but the oldest is a lab who's somewhere around 12.
