Letting the Dog Out

Does this look like the face of a killer to you?

Yeah, I didn't think so. You would never know it, but Tabasco is quite the hunter. We've been his parents for four years now -- we adopted him from a shelter in Naperville, IL called ADOPT on April 11, 2005. When we lived in IL we had a decent sized yard and lived in a subdivision that was a little bit "out of the way" (and now houses a hideous Super Wal-Mart in the backyard, which is the #1 reason we moved, but I digress). The area we live in now is a bit more urban. Still technically a suburb, but the houses are older and close together and we can walk to the park, library and shopping in a matter of minutes. Our backyard is tiny compared to IL, but there is enough room for Tabasco to get into trouble. A lot of trouble as a matter of fact.

We have squirrels everywhere. I mean EVERYWHERE! They are fast, they can jump high and they climb onto everything. Tabasco's first capture was a squirrel -- he caught it the first fall we lived in our house. He thought it was one of his furry squeaky toys come to life and he caught it in our backyard. Thank GOD Tim was home and could take care of it.

The following spring we had a family of possums move in under our low deck off the back of our house. Tabasco LOVED to scratch at the deck trying to get to them. Good times. One night he greeted us a the back door with one of the possum babies. Possums are known to "play dead" so once we told Tabasco a MILLION times to drop it he finally did and when Tim went back out to dispose of it it was no where to be found. Turns out it crawled back to its home under our deck (or one of its peeps took it back) and died there. A week later -- when it started to get warmer -- we had the most horrid smell coming from under our deck. Yeah, not fun. We had to spread lyme through the cracks to get rid of the smell in time for our big Memorial Day party that year.

Which leads up to Tabasco's most recent prey. We've always had a bunny rabbit or two in our backyard. They are pretty quick, though, and sort of blend into the grass, so often by the time Tabasco would see it the bunny was on its way out of our yard through the breaks in our fence. The other night I was upstairs getting ready for bed and Tim was with Tabasco for his before bedtime jaunt outside. It was taking them a LONG time to come upstairs, but I didn't think much of it. Turns out, Tabasco caught himself that bunny rabbit (although Tim thinks maybe some other animal -- like a neighborhood cat - caught it first and just left it in our backyard). Needless to say it was not a pretty site and I am SOOOOO thankful Tim was home to take care of it because I may have never let Tabasco back in the house (or left my house through the back door again). YUCK and EWE!!!!

So yeah, for the most part Tabasco is a great dog and we live in the "city". I shutter to think of what he would do if we actually had some land!!