I'm not a good dog owner...

I'll admit it. Actually, I don't think that the Kuiper family are good dog owners. If our dog could talk I could hear him saying "nah nah nah boo boo".

Okay, here's the latest in the "Moki stories". Yesterday it was a fairly decent day and Abby and I decided to get outside for a breath of fresh air. The garage desperately needed to be swept and Abby really wanted to play on her tricyle. So, being the nice person I try to be, I thought instead of putting the dog in his crate (he does not have free reign of the house when we are not in it...I'd hate to find out what he would do if he did!), I would move his tie out so he could be by us. This required going into the front yard, getting it and attaching it to the basketball post. The mistake I made: I left Abby in the house with Moki. Yup, Moki ended up outside running around, NOT on his tie out. Somehow he "got out" according to Abby. This dog stays within his own eye-shot of us, but will not listen to "COME". He ran around for about 20 minutes with me chasing after him yelling at him "Moki, come". He'd look up at me every now and then and allow me to get close enough to him to almost get him and then he'd dart away. This is not the first time this has happened. Anyway, he ended up in the brush by the barn next to our house running back with a "prize". Some sort of animal bone that he chewed a joint off of. At this point Abby had a great idea to get a toy and that actually worked to get him.

Okay, fast forward to today. You'd think I would have learned by now...
Josh has off of school today, so when it came time to take Abby to school we decided to be nice and take Moki with us so he wouldn't have to be in his crate. Why am I "nice" to this dog? Anyway, I always put a leash on him just in case he gets out of the van. Good thing. We made it fine to school, but we had to stop by Todd's work to get Abby's "correct" booster seat out of the truck. Josh had Moki by the leash and I got out to get the booster. That went fine. Then I saw something in the back of the truck that I thought I might need. So, I left the door to the van open while getting it out of the truck. All of a sudden I hear Josh say "oh no, Mom!" and then I see a white streak as the dog jets out of the van. So, here I am following this, pardon my language, stupid dog, around the parking lot at Todd's work yelling "Moki, come!" Same thing as yesterday, he keeps me within eye shot, but each time I get close he jets away. Josh is in the van crying by now, probably because the first thing I had said about the incident was "Josh, why did you let him go? UGH!" At this point I knew I needed reinforcements. So, I tried calling Todd on his cell phone, but he wasn't picking it up. I did end up reaching him and by this time Moki is up by the entrance of the building doing his "little duty" as Todd and two other people are walking out of the building. Talk about embarassing! We did get him at this point.

Two lessons I learned from this:
1. Don't be nice to the dog anymore. Put him in his crate.
2. Don't blame my children for my mistakes. I apologized to Josh because it wasn't his fault that I left the door to the van open. The dog is strong, I should never had expected him to keep a good hold of that leash.