This series of stories will be titled 'I'm surprised I turned out as well as I did, given my childhood ...' 53

You remember Rom – our escape artiste…

Well, that wasn’t the only time he escaped.

Puppy Rom - he made a nest

Our garden is quite large - not on the USA scale, but it is for the UK (especially compared to new-builds).

We have 100ft long garden and it’s a good width too.

The garden is securely fenced, 6ft+ high fencing all the way around, with sheds at the bottom of the garden. At the top, the garage separates the front from the back securely too. The dogs cannot get out – in theory…

Trev (@s0u1) and our son Haydn were on the front of the house, working on one of the bikes. A great father-son activity for a Sunday afternoon.

Heads down in concentration, studying the bike engine, they obviously missed the ‘Stealth-Rottie’ trot past them (I don’t know how they missed him, it’s not like he was a delicate little thing).

Something caught Haydn’s attention. Down the street, a guy was approaching, walking a rather handsome Rottie.

“Look at this Rottie, Dad,” Haydn said, pointing to the guy with the handsome and well-behaved dog walking towards them. “He’s a big lad!”

“Wow, yeah, that’s one big Rottie,” Trev said. Obviously they both stood in admiration for a little while and the guy came close.

“Hang on…” says Haydn. “That’s Rom!”

They both looked to the garage, they could see right through it to the back garden, but they’d blocked any escape routes off… or so they thought.

Older Rom he still loved his 'nest'

Rom had indeed trotted past on his own little adventure – again.

Rather than saying ‘Hello’ to Trev and Haydn, which would have resulted in immediate capture and return to his garden, he trotted off and followed a German Shepherd this time.

The guy that brought him home said he was very well-behaved and a polite guest but there wasn’t really room for him, so he had to come home.

This part of Jumanji always reminds us of that beautiful dog as he got older and less agile.

Rom was clever in other ways too.

We kept the dogs from the top part of the garden sometimes because they got into no end of mischief.

Rom could open the patio door and let himself inside and if he got inside when we didn’t know, he could also open the doors in the house and we’d encounter a surprise Rottie when we weren’t expecting him.

To open the patio door, he would put his tooth in the bottom corner and push hard. Yes, they are THAT strong! We had to close the door AND lock it to stop him getting in.

The glass in the door finally cracked and we had to replace that pane.

We bought a new gate to keep the dogs to the lower part of the garden and though they had more than half the space of the property, Rom wasn’t happy about it.

We caught them ‘escaped’ and put them back so many times that we had to find out how they were getting out.

Well, that was easy. The gate catch was attached to the fence and they leaned on the fence to disengage the catch from the side – basically, the catch and the latch no longer touched and so the gate swung open with a little push. We didn’t realise exactly how they were working it out to start with. We thought a little push from a great big dog was simply opening it by force.

Toward the end of the life of that patio door

The hinges were swapped around to stop them pushing the gate open.

They then adapted and leaned on the fence to disengage the catch and PULLED the gate open.

Again, we didn’t realise they were deliberately disengaging the catch and we were stumped! We watched and saw Rom lean on the fence to bow it out, disengaging the catch so the gate swung freely.

The fence was made more sturdy so they couldn’t just lean on it anymore. They did try. We watched from the kitchen. We were just beginning to feel smug that we’d outwitted them at last when we saw Rom studying the catch – he was actually working out the problem!

One large paw reached up, pressed down the catch and pulled the gate open.

A rope over the gate and fence didn’t even keep them in long enough to get back in the house! Rom hooked his nose under the rope and slipped it off the fence. Then he reached his paw up and opened the catch. Trev watched him do it even as my back was turned.

A rope through the fence so he couldn’t hook it up and over worked for five minutes.

I swear that dog could undo knots!

By now, it had become a battle of wits – us vs the dogs (how humiliating, we were losing!)

A chain was finally utilised to keep them in and we had to admit, they are bloody clever dogs!