{"id":175,"date":"2015-06-19T14:57:03","date_gmt":"2015-06-19T18:57:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/?p=175"},"modified":"2015-07-06T14:30:42","modified_gmt":"2015-07-06T18:30:42","slug":"a-boxer-named-bo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/?p=175","title":{"rendered":"A BOXER NAMED BO"},"content":{"rendered":"

My latest book, HALLEY, Awarded 2015 Jefferson Cup Honor for Historical Fiction. Available at: NewSouth Books:\u00a0www.newsouthbooks.com\/halley<\/a> and Amazon.<\/em><\/p>\n

I\u2019m a dog lover, and I particularly love Boxers.\u00a0 So when I found Bo
\nat a humane shelter about ten years ago, I was smitten right off.
\nDespite his claims to the contrary, he was half something other than
\nBoxer.\u00a0 His long snout was a dead giveaway.\u00a0 \u00a0 But he managed to charm
\nhis way into Boxer Rescue anyway.<\/p>\n

Bo had been surrendered by his original owner because he could leap
\nfour-foot-fencing and had been roaming many neighborhoods at will.\u00a0 To
\nmake him ours, my husband and I had to agree to install six foot
\nfencing and to pay for heart worm treatments.\u00a0 Bo wasn\u2019t a cheap dog,
\nand if I hadn\u2019t already been in love, I would have moved on.\u00a0 But we
\npaid for the treatments and a six foot fence surrounding a large area
\nof yard and connecting to a doorway into a building we call \u201cthe
\ncottage.\u201d\u00a0 Inside the dogtrot hallway of the cottage, my husband,
\nBenjamin, built a carpeted, insulated doghouse, and he installed two
\n100 watt bulbs, to provide heat in winter.\u00a0 A curtain over the doorway
\nkept out winter drafts. It had carpet.<\/p>\n

Bo inspected everything, scent marked key landmarks and then announced
\nhe wanted out.\u00a0 He tried to leap the fence, and then he tried to climb
\nit.\u00a0 Then he whined and whined and howled.\u00a0 The second day we let him
\nout so he could check out the rest of the yard.\u00a0 Immediately he took
\noff for the busy highway.\u00a0 We chased and we yelled, but Bo was
\noblivious. He zipped across that highway, totally ignoring honking
\ncars and eighteen wheelers, and raced across the cotton field on the
\nfar side.\u00a0 Back to the fence.<\/p>\n

The next outing Benjamin led him by leash into the woods behind our
\nhouse, and then staked the leash next to a stack of concrete blocks.
\n\u201cYou can get acquainted with your new home while I dig the foundation
\nfor this shed,\u201d he said.\u00a0 Bo\u00a0 was sniffing the air and then he was
\nracing around, smelling the ground.\u00a0 At that moment a mouse scurried
\nacross the pine needles and ducked through an opening in a concrete
\nblock.\u00a0 Bo was right behind him and managed to thrust his head through
\nthe block. When Bo tried to pull his head out, the three-layer stack
\nof blocks began to shake and then crashed down.\u00a0 Bo wore the block he
\nwas stuck in until Benjamin could free him.<\/p>\n

We eventually trained Bo to know his own yard, but he \u201cforgot\u201d on a
\nregular basis, especially when chasing a stray dog or cat, a squirrel
\nor possom.\u00a0 On those occasions he seemed to forget even where home was
\nand sometimes he didn\u2019t come back until the wee hours of morning.
\nOccasionally he returned smelling of a dead animal he\u2019d rolled in.<\/p>\n

One July when I was recovering from cancer surgery he pulled one of
\nthose disappearing acts and he didn\u2019t come back by morning.\u00a0 Benjamin
\nwent looking for him.\u00a0 None of the neighbors had seen him. He wasn\u2019t
\nat the trailer park about a mile away, where one of his former cat
\nchases had taken him.\u00a0 Another day passed and no Bo.\u00a0 I pictured him
\nlying in a field somewhere, dying.\u00a0 A third day came, and by then I
\nwas sure Bo was gone forever.<\/p>\n

At mid-morning a truck pulled up in the yard, and a neighbor got out.
\n\u201cThat dog you been looking for–is he caramel colored and about yay
\ntall?\u00a0 I\u2019ve been hearing noises in my barn loft for several days, but
\nI figured it was just squirrels.\u00a0 It\u2019s been so blamed hot I didn\u2019t
\nhardly see how it could be anything else.\u00a0 Then this morning I decided
\nto check.\u00a0 Well, there he was.\u00a0 He was scared of those stairs–had to
\nwhip him with a broom to get \u2018im down.\u00a0 Soon as he was outside, he
\ndrank about a gallon of water from the pond.\u00a0 I \u2018spect you need to
\ncome after him.\u00a0 Not sure he\u2019s able to walk this far.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bo recovered, and I wish I could say he learned his lesson.\u00a0 But then,
\nif he had, we would know it wasn\u2019t the real Bo!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My latest book, HALLEY, Awarded 2015 Jefferson Cup Honor for Historical Fiction. Available at: NewSouth Books:\u00a0www.newsouthbooks.com\/halley and Amazon. I\u2019m a dog lover, and I particularly love Boxers.\u00a0 So when I found Bo at a humane shelter about ten years ago, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=175"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":182,"href":"https:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175\/revisions\/182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}