ONE SHOCKED DOG

ONE SHOCKED DOG

I received a post about a Kansas farm wife who called the local phone company to report her telephone failed to ring when her friends called - and that on the few occasions, when it did ring, her dog always moaned right before the phone rang.


It turned out that the dog was connected to the phone line with a metal leash. When a call came in the line would shock the dog which caused him howl and to wet which made a solid connection for the phone so it could ring.


This post about the dog being grounded to the phone line reminded me of something that happened to my little dog, Mike, when I was stationed in Ft Hood, Texas.


The housing in Kaleen, the city next to the Fort, was terrible. My wife and I finally had to buy a mobile home. Thats right. We were trailer trash for a while.


Now on with the story.


It had been raining during the night. In the morning I let our dog, Mike, out through the front door of the trailer. A very short time later I heard a yipe from my pouch. He was at the door shivering when I opened it an instant later. I looked around and could find nothing that might have caused him to yipe and shiver so I let him in and consoled him. There were no scratch marks on him so his actions were left a mystery.

The next morning it was still wet from rain when I let him out. This time I watched him as he left the door. He promptly went to the metal front jack of the mobile home and heisted his leg and let a out a squirt on it. He jumped about a foot in the air with a loud yipe as his water hit the jack. He was in my arms, shivering, in the next instant.

It seems the people who set up our mobile home did not properly ground our trailer. Poor Mike was making an electrical connection between our ungrounded trailer and the wet ground.


Mike never heisted his leg on the trailer jack again.


A little about Mike the dog.

Mike as a miniature Doberman who stood about 9 inches if he was on his tip toes. He would never chase a cat. There were several feral cats around out home when we moved to Phoenix.

The only way I could get Mike to do his doggy thing and chase the cats away was to throw him at them. He found it fun to chase after them for a very short time. Then he lost interest.

One time Mike was in the front yard chewing on a bone. He had his rump in the air and was on his front elbows as he nibbled on that savory bone.

One of the stray cats decided he was a standing target and ran at him. Mike just moved his rump out of the swing of the cat as the cat ran by. This went on for a couple of times until the cat gave up. Mike never missed one chew on his bone and never got popped by the cat.


We visited a lake near our home in Kaleen right after we got Mike. We were splashing in the water but Mike would have nothing to do with the Lake. I decided that Mike needed to get introduced to water so I picked him up and threw him in to the lake where the water came up to his belly. He just froze there like a bronze statue in the pose he had when he hit the water. all our calling did not get him to move. I finally picked him up and put him on the bank. He immediately ran back into the water.

One of his amazing tricks was to fetch the exact stone I would throw into the water. He would dive for it and always came up with the exact stone.

Grandpa