Fence Sitter
The housecat caught in a tree is an old cliché. I came across a peculiar variation on the theme yesterday, when I went out to fetch a magazine from the car. The neighbor’s dog—possibly a Doberman—was perched up on the edge of the picket fence separating our yards, right along the upper brace, no more than a couple inches wide.
I don’t know how she got up there, but I suspect I know why: in almost the same moment as I spotted the dog, I spotted another neighbor’s cat stepping nonchalantly across our driveway towards one of our trash cans, which had been knocked over by some third animal I never saw. “Dog? What dog? Ohhhh, that dog. I dunno—I got nothing to do with it. Oh, hey, are those chicken bones? You don’t mind if I just take a closer look at those, do you? Okay, just carry on about your business.”
The dog, by contrast, looked decidedly uncomfortable, unhappy to be balancing on that narrow ledge, but not really sure she could make the leap down, either. Adding to her discomfort was the fact that she didn’t know whether to accept my help or to growl at me for approaching the property line.
I had good reason to help; the situation presented two dangers. The jump down to our side of the fence actually was a little dangerous; the tree bed at the corner of the lot is filled with large, rough rocks, and I was worried the dog might hurt herself hopping down on those. The jump back to her own brick-lined yard would have been a lot safer were it not for the length of makeshift leash dangling from her collar onto our side, an entirely awkward and inappropriate substitute for a leash composed of plastic-sheathed steel cable, too short to be convenient, but long enough to be hazardous—if the dog just hopped back down into her own yard, there was a chance of the knob on the end of that makeshift leash catching between pickets of the fence. The leash was probably long enough not to leave her dangling choking from the fence if that happened, but I didn’t particularly want to test it.
So we both faced dilemmas: she whether to jump down or try to stay up, me whether to encourage her down on our side or their side of the fence. The neighbors were nowhere to be seen, although the other four dogs in the yard—yappy little vermin belonging to our neighbor’s boyfriend—were barking their heads off, happy at last to have an excuse to bark at nothing at all.
In the end, neither of us orchestrated her rescue. I decided just to lift her down; she looked light enough. So I made soothing noises and walked gently up to her. But although the plea for human assistance was clear in her expression, and her tail wagged limply, she decided she didn’t quite trust me. With a soft growl, she tried to back up without losing her balance, and failed, toppling down into her own yard. Both the leash and her paw caught between pickets of the fence, which was alarming, although I was able to flick both paw and leash free with no apparent damage, apart from the poor dog’s slightly bruised ego. (Yes, dogs do, on occasion, feel embarrassed.) Yet the whole episode was somewhat unsettling.
A dog is in many ways similar to a small child. I’m told their intelligence is quantitatively if not qualitatively equivalent to a two-year-old human’s, and they show the same willingness to trust adult authority—which in turn causes any decent adult to want to protect them from danger, whether or not the dog or child is his own. I didn’t do much of a job with our neighbor’s dog, though even with hindsight, I don’t see how I could have done any better. And it’s upsetting not to be able to make everything all right…despite the fact that everything did turn out all right.