Later that summer, while still fairly new to our family, and while my parents were visiting, Lizzy managed to almost kill my mom of a heart attack when, in pursuit of a chipmunk, she got her head stuck in a plastic outdoor vent and pulled it from its moorings so she was running around with her head caught in the black pipe while my mom tried to dislodge it, convinced that the dog would asphyxiate.
This past fall, Lizzy managed to get herself skunked several times, while trying to attack a skunk that had entered into our yard through a hole in the fence, which my husband later fixed. It was past 10 p.m. and I let her out for her "last call" only to hear the high-pitched yelps and plaintive barks that tell us she's found a critter she wants to kill. The skunk, however, did not have plans to die that night, and, despite the fact that Lizzy kept trying to charge it, the critter won the fight, managing to cover Lizzy's face and her flanks with the worst smell EVER to be found on this earth. At that hour, and on our deck, we had to hose her down with water and mouthwash, which I found on the Internet was a recommended home solution for skunkings (of course, the mouthwash is not to be used on the dog's face but its body).
Today, Lizzy regaled us with her killer instinct yet again when, in pursuit of some small woodland critter, she found a lair and proceeded to dig herself, waist-deep, into a mud hole. Using buckets of warm water this time, because the hose is completely frozen, my husband and I were able to clean her up enough to let her back inside. Now my husband is going to have to go find that hole and try to cover it somehow so that Lizzy can't go back and do a repeat performance but the small woodland creature can still get in and out.
César Millán, of The Dog Whisperer fame, advises that, when choosing a dog, one should pick an animal that has about the same energy level as its owners. In that measure, at the very least, we did not choose wisely, at all.
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