A Royal Welcome

Royal is the newest member of the Strecker household! It was the name that was given to him by the staff at the shelter where we adopted him. We think it is pretty cool, since we live in KC, home of the KC Royals. He is a Setter/Terrier mix weighing in at 22 pounds and as near as we can tell, between 3-5 years of age. He looks pretty confidant, considering this is a picture taken on our trip home from the Gardner Animal Hospital the day he was adopted. He loved the car ride home and has since been on several.

Royal seems to be the perfect dog. He was housetrained when we adopted him. He doesn't jump up on the furniture, he sleeps through the night, doesn't bark excessively and he LOVES to walk!
He is very friendly and lovable, (he can't get enough petting), and almost always comes when we call him.

We took things pretty easy with Royal the first few days. He was never off his leash unless he was in the house because we wanted him to bond with us and get used to his new surroundings. The fence in our backyard is only about four feet high, and an athletic dog like Royal could easily jump over if so inclined. As a matter of fact, the first day we had Royal home, it took him about 10 minutes to find the only loose board in the fence. He crawled through and bounded into the neighbors yard and up on their deck. He didn't respond real well to our calls, but we finally got him to come to the fence so Adrienne could pick him up and carry him back into the house.
With that in mind, we chose to proceed carefully with the leash on at all times when outofdoors.

On Friday, I was working on grandma's table in the basement early in the morning. I had put another coat of boiled linseed oil on the top that has to dry for 24 hours. Later that afternoon, Glen was demo-ing the kitchen floor using a circular saw to cut away the two layers of flooring in preparation for hardwood. I was watching an episode of The Dog Whisperer with Royal, when my eyes started burning from the smell of what I thought was the sawed flooring in the kitchen. When the smell didn't seem to dissipate, I walked all through the house trying to discover an alternate source for the odor, still burning my eyes, badly. I must have walked through the house 3 or 4 times before I decided to turn off the air conditioner and pull the odor through the house using the whole house fan in the attic. When that didn't help, I decided Glen had started a fire in the subfloor and it must be burning underneath from the basement side. So I did another search in the basement, in the area under the kitchen. Finding nothing suspicious I said to myself, "It smells like chemicals!" That's when it clicked, so I walked over to the other side of the basement, looking carefully around all the chemicals we had been using to restore the table and that's when I noticed smoke coming from the cardboard box I had piled all my oily rags in! (I know, never store oily rags in a confined space!) The can even says "may spontaneously combust" if soaked rags stored improperly!
Long story short, Royal escaped out the door while Glen and I were disposing of the smoldering rags. He took off like a house 'afire! Wow, can he run. Had he been in a race, I would have been able to enjoy his amazing speed. As it was, all I could do was hold my breath as he sped down the block to busy Brougham Street, or worse yet, the Fe. Luckily for us, it turned out Royal can't resist a long sniff here and there. Glen had sped down the block in his truck to catch up to him. But instead of hopping in the truck, he took off across Brougham, then stopped dead at a mailbox for a nice, long sniff. That's when Glen was able to walk over and pick him up.

So you see, every dog has his day, and Royal's was Friday. Because not only did he escape once, but just a few minutes later, Glen accidently left the door open again, and naturally, Royal was on his way out the garage. Glen let out a roaring, "Get back in there!" and that's exactly what he did! Whew! I couldn't have taken another escape.

Our perfect dog doesn't do so well with freedom. Other than that, he is still the perfect dog. Stay tuned for more Royal stories. I have a feeling there will be plenty!