Tears and Sadness at our home

We lost our younger dog yesterday. His name was Bo and he was killed on the highway after jumping the fence around our yard. It has put a cloud on our entire household, and we shed many tears yesterday. J is taking it very hard.

For those of you who have followed this blog, you know we have been struggling to keep these dogs in our yard since the first or second week in September. We had done well the last couple of weeks, as yesterday was the first day they escaped in almost three weeks. We kind of thought we had the trouble licked. I guess not.

As you can imagine we blame ourselves for the fact that try as we might, we never were able to train him not to jump the fence. We just couldn't afford the expense of an invisible fence around our entire five acres of land. We really did try hard to get him trained using shock collar training, building up the areas of the fence where we suspected he was getting out, and never leaving him out if we were not home. But he was pretty strong willed - both dogs are/were really - and yesterday while I was in the house doing some office work both dogs escaped. I looked for them for almost four hours.

A very kind man called me to tell me he had seen the dog get hit, the driver drove on, but this nice man stopped, got him off the road and captured our other dog, Leo. He was so kind, giving me a big hug when I arrived. I was distraught and never did get his name, but he was very kind. Those dogs had gone miles from home - I never would have thought to look for them that far away.

For today we as a family are very sad and trying to move on and do the things that need to be done. It is hard. J went to school, and I think the focus of school activities will help him a bit.

I don't really have anything else to say today. Hopefully will be back tomorrow or Saturday feeling up to posting something more upbeat than this.