Early Saturday, while harmlessly minding his own "business", Oscar was the victim of just such a squirrel-on-dog crime.
Yes, my friends, this sweet, innocent dog was mocked.
But he refuses to be a victim, I tell you, refuses!
He took off after that squirrel - determined to give it a stern talking to.
Unfortunately, through no fault of his own, there were apparently some trees that may or may not have been in different places than they have been for the past four years of his life, and the length of his tether was misjudged.
The rogue squirrel reached one of those migrating trees just seconds before Oscar reached the end of his (literal) rope. The little bastard (I have it on good authority his parents were not married) is lucky with his timing, because when Oscar reached the end of his rope, Oscar did not stop running (after all, he thought he had a good ten feet left to run, and he would have if he'd run to the right of a tree instead of to the left of it).
Nope, Oscar did not stop running at all. He did a funky kind of little flip, landed solidly, and kept running.
Fortunately for everyone involved, most fortunately for my cardiac health, Oscar is not completely untrained in the recall.
Because when he did come back, hanging from his collar was this.
Now, Oscar is under 55 pounds.
That right there is the clasp for his tether, packaged as the "Monster - for dogs 250lb and up"
*calculating on fingers*
55 is still less than 250, right?
And yet that metal (I'd guess 9 or 10 mm around) snapped like a pretzel. Sure, a little rust around the edges, but the thing was probably less than six months old, and certainly not corroding away.
Just a motivated dog, I suppose. Or an evil plot hatched by the rodent population?
You decide.
