thanks helen. it shook me up something rotten but thanks goodness the outcome was nothing worse than a few more grey hairs!

we've blocked up the cat entrance and will have to sort out an alternative for tabitha now.

lily really did just run straight out into the road and it would have been the end of her if there had of been a car coming! so that is it now. i was letting her walk from the car to the front door but there is no way i'm risking her taking off again. she's shown me an unpredictable side to her that i'm not prepared to enable!

that's an incredible story about cassie! what a good girl she was! i'm so glad you had a happy outcome to a potentially horrific ending too! and that is bizarre about the doors that day, almost like you had a sixth sense!

sod the tea! i had a glass of red wine!

My God you were lucky too weren't you there!! No, we must never be complacent (sp?)

I always used to do that with Cassie when I arrived up on the village green, always short of time coz I was busy working at the time, so I'd pull up in the road (not a busy road, just the village ring road), let her out, and she'd run under the fence onto the green. One afternoon, that's just what I did, and when I got onto the green, I couldn't see her in front of me, and as I turned, she was just about to run into the road to see another dog walking up on the other side, and hurfing along that road heading straight to Cassie, was white van man!!!! I didn't hesitate, I could see he was going to hit her, even though he was doing his utmost to avoid her with his front wheel, I yelled out her name followed by a loud "wait", and that dog stopped dead in her tracks, about 2" from the front wheel of the van!!! I will never forget that day either, and from then on, my dogs have NEVER just been let out of the car like that, they are told to wait, their leads go on, even for the 2 yards to get onto the grass!!! I think that poor van driver had to change his pants when he got back to the depot, coz he slumped his head on the steering wheel when I went over to thank him, coz how he stopped I will never know, he was swerving all over the place to avoid her, but he had nowhere to go, the road was so narrow and on a bend!

Now, this morning, the woman with the puppy was shortly up ahead from me as I left the car park OFFLEAD So I kept Zena on her lead and held Georgie's rope as we headed off. I kept them like this the entire way across the first field, and the woman turned around, saw me, and then started running into the 2nd field with her puppy and another woman with the pointer she has and left the 14 year old Goldie to make his own way! By the time I got to the 2nd field, she had completely gone, but I headed in another direction so that I could let my dogs offlead, and I told a friend of mine with her little jr who Zena adores, to tell that stupid woman that I will NEVER have Zena offlead if I ever see her, so she's not to worry about us!

I then met up with another friend who has a rescue lurcher, who is Zena's most favourite playmate, so they had a good run around (as you can imagine coz he's a lurcher!!! ), and I said to my friend, I'm gonna try something here because of yesterday, so when I saw Zena chasing Robbie around, I called out her name in a normal call, followed by the "come" command, and that dog instantly stopped chasing Robbie, and came hurfing up to me so I just quickly said good girl and sent her off immediately to play again, so I hope I did right there, it was the right thing to do in my mind anyways! My friend said she has never seen a dog stop playing instantly like that when the owner has called, so I feel absolutely 100% sure that Zena DID scare herself the other day and I doubt very much that she won't listen to me again when I call her to me (I won't put my money on it though!!!! ).

THEN, as we headed back towards the car park, we could hear all this calling and calling, and as I looked over to the other side where I had come up, guess who had lost their newly acquired puppy then??????!!!! Stupid woman!!! We left them to it, coz I had a dental appointment and I wasn't going to join in the hunt when there were 2 of them anyway. A puppy offlead yes, we all do it, it's good to do that, but a 10 month old puppy, who has only been with YOU for 2 days, I beg to differ! Hopefully she found it before it ran into the busy MAIN road further on past those fields! Jeeeze!

well i think the phrase 'better safe than sorry' is the one for me now! oh helen your heart must have been in your mouth when cassie ran out like that! and to be honest i'm not surprised that you were able to stop her in her tracks knowing what zena is like!

good to hear that the beautiful one is back to her normal self. i took lily out early this morning for a long walk and she was as good as gold. came back when i called even when she was playing. mind you when i arrived home i got her out of the car and didn't put her down until i was safely indoors!

god i hope that little pup doesn't come to a sticky end! it sounds like that woman needs a little advice there!

Glad to hear Lily is also back to her normal good girlie self, and glad to hear you put that lead on when you got back, it's just not worth the risk for 2 seconds putting a lead on is it! When I pull into the driveway, I never let them out until I've shut both the gates, only because of Zena, whereas in the past, when the dogs are older, I've never bothered, I just bring them inside, but that won't happen for a long time with Zena, until I can trust her 100%.

You can't talk to that woman, I've tried with her 14 year old goldie who has to keep stopping lifting it's front leg, poor bladdy thing can hardly walk and yet they drag it along every morning on the same walk I do with my two at that age, it's unbelievable isn't it! I did say something to her, but she said it likes to get out, yeah it likes to get out, but not for half an hour's walk around two great big fields!!!!! I will find out in the morning if they found it or not and if it came to any harm, then I will certainly be giving her my opinion don't you worry about that!!!!!