Houdini the Beagle

Oh what a day!  Actually, it's been quite a week.  I'd refer to it as fragmented rather than busy, although we have been on the go a bit more than usual as well.  Generally I struggle with a fragmented type of week.  By fragmented, I mean that we have several places to go or things to accomplish, but they are not back-to-back.  And I do not deal well with the chunks of time in between so not much gets accomplished on the homeschool front.

But Thursdays are a day where we have just one big thing to do, our homeschool co-op.  It's a great opportunity for our children to do school activities with other children who are home educated.  They get a chance to do the type of classroom activities that are harder to replicate at home, such as group presentations and science experiments.  And we were looking forward to it all week.

We were almost ready to head out the door when we received a telephone call.  "Are you Speedy's owner?" the lady on the other end of the phone said.  "Yes?" I replied.  "He is in front of my house" - which was about 2 blocks away.  So, the kids and I head off - the oldest on his bike, the youngest on his scooter, my middle child and I on foot and I had the leash in hand.

Once we retrieved him from our nice neighbor who wanted to tell us all about the adventures Speedy had in her home while awaiting our arrival, we returned home, escorted him to his crate and headed on our way.  We arrived late and this threw off our day, but at least we'd had our adventure for the day.

Or so I thought...guess who escaped 2 more times.  Guess how many times we received the "Are you Speedy's owner?" phone call today.  I think he may have met more neighbors today than we have met over the course of our 5 years in the neighborhood.

I never cease to be amazed at how right I was when I said that getting a second dog would grow my patience.  Of course, when I said that, I never dreamed that second dog would be a beagle.  Or that this Beagle should have been named Houdini or perhaps Patrick Henry.  That was not my plan, but it seems he may be exactly what I needed.