In the spirit of more happy stories for Mrs G (which means no more stories of when the pets died) I can't remember if I've told you guys about my basenji before. I had him for 10+ years before I even knew what he was. Kept asking everytime I went to a vet and they never knew, but one time one of the assistants recognized the breed. I looked it up when I got home and sure enough it described my dog perfectly. Two of the things I remember reading that I wished I'd known 10 years earlier. 1. You don't train Basenji's, you have to convince them that they want to do what you want. 2. Chain link fences are just ladders to freedom. So here's 2 stories about My basenji Q-tip.
I used to let him and my shepherd out to run the property in the evening when I got home. But if it was dark out, I didn't let them out. Got to where I was working late in the winter and wasn't able to let them out quite often. Q-tip thought this was bullshit, so he started shitting in the house. I'd punish him and make him sleep outside (in the fenced in part of the yard) and he'd shit in the house when I let him in to feed him in the morning. Eventually I realized he was only shitting in the house when I didn't let them run the property. He was doing it to punish me. When I'd find it, he wouldn't even slink away, he stood there over the pile of shit defiantly.
After my shepherd passed and Q-tip was an only dog, he started escaping. I didn't even know he was escaping for a long time because he was back home before me. I think while the shepherd was alive he didn't escape unless she came too. He got caught by animal control once and when I went to get him from the hoosegow the animal control officers told me all the stories of the months and months that they'd been chasing him and couldn't even figure out where he lived. After that they were calling me when they saw him out and told me how he leapt through the fence at a dead run (since they now knew where he lived, they could head him off at the pass). Up until then we couldn't figure out how he was getting out. I had range fencing around my back yard. For those who don't know, that's the wire fence made up of squares that get larger as you go higher. Well, the little fucker realized he could climb and squeeze through the squares about 3 or 4 rows up. That was when I remembered how he'd been barely touching his food and losing a lot of weight. The sumbitch put himself on a diet so he could squeeze through lower.
