Bad dog!

No little sticks for my dog!

I should have named my dog "Houdini" because he is a master escape artist. We have a six-foot privacy fence in our backyard, and even though he is only about two-feet tall, he quickly figured out how to get over it. He would hop over the short fence into the garden, then climb on top of the mulch pile and jump over the privacy fence. His main reason for doing this is brotherly love! You see, our neighbors adopted his brother at the same time we adopted Jay, and he loves to go next door and play with Jake. Yes, they are named Jay and Jake...Jay Tripps and Jake Tanglefoot to be exact, and neither of us even knew what the other one was naming them!

Due to Jay's insistence on trying to get out and visit Jake, I have learned that Jiu-Jitsu training can also be beneficial in trying to deal with a sneaky dog! Last week Jake was outside in the neighbor's front yard, and Jay found a new way to escape from the house to go see him. We have a double-hung window upstairs, and the top section of it was open. Jay could not reach the open window, so he climbed on top of the love seat and literally scaled the wall to reach it. Then he jumped through the window with such force that it knocked out the screen that was clipped in. After surviving the ten-foot fall to the roof of the front porch, he then jumped fifteen feet off of the porch into the front yard.

Jay thought he was home free, but little did he know that one of our women's Jiu-Jitsu students, AJ, lives next door. She caught him, and since his collar had fallen off during his escape, she held him in back control until I got over there. As she was releasing him to me, Jay took the opportunity to try to run, and he almost got away, until I reached out with one hand and grabbed him by the skin on his side. I still can't believe I was actually able to catch him, and I'm convinced my Jiu-Jitsu training helped me to do so. There was no way he was getting away from my awesome grip skills! At that point he just sat down, and allowed me to pick him up and carry him home. Jiu-Jitsu can help in ways you never even realize, both AJ and I were able to control Jay without hurting either him or ourselves!