Poor pup got Garmin'ed

So, friends, our family has been on a journey since the end of December. A journey to tame this crazy dog of ours. She is the sweetest dog in the world when you can catch her and she isn't using your hand as a chew toy...in a playful way. From the eating of everything that isn't nailed down, to the finding her standing on top of our kitchen table, to chewing through three leashes, a dog bowl and her special walking harness, she has made her mark. But as we all remember, the straw that broke the camel's back was when our sweet chocolate Copper girl jumped the fence and decided to visit the neighbors through their dog door and into their bed. Twice. Yes. That is what put me over the edge. We considered every cost effective possibility, talked to many people about increasing the height of our fence, electrifying our fence(which we cannot do in the city) and putting armed guards at the fence to keep her in. None of these seemed to be practical or affordable for what we needed. So after meeting some very chatty and opinionated pet owners at the dog park, I learned that the new wave of the dog future is the "E Collar". When I googled the aforementioned term, I got more information than I ever thought possible. After much research and muddling through the guilt of the use of the device, I presented my research to the hub. He decided that we should search locally for the collar. No luck for our preferred brand. Then this week, after she chewed up her bed, a checkout line cookbook and halfway through another leash all in the course of a half hour and then took off running so fast that the leash jerked and made my arm 2 inches longer, I hit my limit. I texted in all caps, so my sweet husband knew I was serious, "I AM DONE AND CANNOT DEAL WITH THIS CRAZY DOG". Within 90 seconds, I received this text, "The Garmin collar will be here Thursday". God bless him.

My little friend in the little boxy brown truck rapped on our door and brought the box today. I was intimidated right off when I had to read the directions just to plug it up and charge it. I had to start the warnings and threats from the moment the kids got in the car. "You do not touch it...do not play with it...you do not want to hurt her and fry her neck." With that, S and I left to go to the store and the hub decided to try it out on this lovely evening. In the middle of JoAnn's aisle of owl printed fat quarters, I received this text message, "Collar works". As we returned home, the two time escapee and bed invader was not gonna go near that once tempting corner. It was a flipping miracle. She was able to run and frolic and get that energy out...but she avoided that evil fence.

Judge us if you must, but if trial number one is any indicator as to how effective this collar is going to be, we might just all make it with our sanity in tact. Welllll...that may be pushing it a bit. My sanity was never completely in tact to start.


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