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Living alongside a highway can have its advantages, especially in the winter when the side roads don't receive the attention from the town and county that the main road receives from the state. But it's not exactly a pet friendly environment, especially for the untrained pet.
Buster and Benny (Buster especially) don't like the sound or sight of traffic, so they have basically trained themselves to avoid the highway! There are 30 vacant acres behind the house, and to the best of my knowledge, they are more than satisfied to go a few hundred feet across the open pasture and wonder around in the wooded areas.
Perhaps I shouldn't say they "are more than satisfied" to visit the woods. They have also been known to visit a neighbor or two as well. We don't let them out on their own too often, mainly for that reason, but they were out early Sunday morning. I figured a quick run before breakfast would get Buster back in a timely fashion, and it did,.... kind of....
Less than an hour after they left, I saw over the kitchen curtain, two human heads on the back porch. I was on my way out anyway, and it turns out that the two heads belonged to two kids from the white house down the road (Yup, that's country!). At the end of a retractable leash in the girl's hand was Buster.
"He came right to me and I read his tag," she said.
"OooooooooooK," I thought.....
"I gave him a half a cup of food too," the little darling said.
So, do I tell her that she could have told him to go home and he would have left on his own? Nope, I figured Donna would want me to be friendly to the neighbor children, so I told the little one that she had made a friend for life! Guess we can't let Buster out on the weekend any more!
They were very nice, polite kids, and I remembered how running errands for the funeral home lady and other interactions with adults when I was a kid made a lasting impression, so I just let the situation be what it was.
Maybe someday those kids will find a dog that really does need an escort home. Maybe their parents explained it to them. I suspect that the parents have seen Buster running around behind the houses. Maybe in a year or two the girl will be old enough to pet sit, or at least collect chicken eggs.... Ugh.... better not even think about that, no less write it. Don't want to be giving anybody any ideas (although she has mentioned chickens a time or two already).
