Dog on a Hot Shingle Roof

So let me tell you about my morning. It's Thursday, and I don't have any classes, so I had a nice little wake and bake session going and was playing some backgammon online when a buddy of mine called. My buddy recently moved into a new house, and Rogue, the dog he's fostering for a buddy of his who recently suffered a traumatic brain injury, had gotten out onto the roof of my buddy's new house.

I've met Rogue on a few occasions, and he's a sweet dog, but kind of an imposing presence. I'm not sure what mix he is exactly, but he's part Ridgeback, and a good-sized boy with a huge head. He had also proven himself to be an escape artist at my buddy's old place, so that's how he got out on the roof. My buddy had left his unscreened bedroom window open.

When I got to the house, Rogue met me at the screened front door, and was barking like he had never met me before. I got him to sniff my hand through the screen, and entered the house once he seemed to recognize me. As soon as I came in, Rogue took off down the hall and up the stairs back to the bedroom. By the time I got up there, he was on the roof again.

My buddy, who's 40 miles away at the dentist in the chair having a cavity refilled, calls at this point. I fill him in on where we're at, and ask him if he has dog treats. He tells me they're in the cabinet by the fridge, so I go back downstairs, retrieve them, and head back upstairs. I hold my hand filled with treats out of the window, and try to coax Rogue over, but he's not having any of it. Okay, fine, so the next step is tossing some treats at him. This works for a while, but Rogue's still not coming near the window. It seems like the next logical step then would be me going out on the roof, but there's a few complicating factors. The window is set up high, it's narrow, and I have rheumatoid arthritis.

The only things I found that I could step on were a couple of five-gallon buckets with lids, so they would have to do. Getting out onto the roof was not pretty, but I managed it. Of course, Rogue retreated to the far part of the roof, when he saw me climbing out the window. I filled my hand with treats and walked over to him. He didn't seem to sure about this while thing, but he did start eating out of my hand. I started rubbing on him, and once we were doing that, I started inching us over to the window.

Once we were at the window, I put some treats on the sill, and Rogue started gobbling them up. I saw this as my opportunity to gently push his hind quarters toward the window opening, but he sensed what I was up to, and made a quick retreat to the far side of the roof again.

Okay, well shit. Now what? Time to crawl back in the window, go downstairs, and head to my car for a smoke to think about things. Stage two, I decided, would have me on the roof again, but with a leash this time.

Now, the good news here is the situation resolved itself as easily as it could. While I was having a smoke, Rogue went back into the house by way of the window. When I got to the door, he greeted me with barks again at the screen door. Luckily, I had grabbed a chewy, fake bone treat and stuck it in my back pocket. I gave that to him, and he seemed very excited with the thing, and laid right down and commenced chewing the thing up. While he did this, I went upstairs and closed the bedroom window. Ta-duh.

All's well that ends well, right? Well, that's mostly true. When I got home, I found the cat had puked, but not a rug for a change, so it was an easy cleanup.

The things we do for the animals we share our homes with seems to be the theme of this post. It's a crazy kind of love, but it seems to be worth it.