Mulligan, the ladies' man

Mulligan never gets posts of his own, poor dog. I mean, he's a member of our family and all. And very photogenic ever since we got our speedy fast SLR camera. He is way too fast of a blinker to have anything short of an SLR. Until we got the Rebel I only had shots of his eyelids!

Anyway, I digress, because I thought I would tell you about Mulligan's girlfriend. A couple of years ago I was about to head out the door for work, and had put Mulligan out one more time before leaving for the whole day. A few minutes later, at 6:45am, there was a knock on the front door. Very unusual to have a visitor so early.

I open the door and a man is standing there with his dog, telling me that he thinks my dog just got loose. Sure enough, there was the rubber-coated steel cable laying there -- with Mulligan's empty collar at the end.

I had Kyle on my hip, and knew that I would be late if I didn't leave in the next few minutes. At that time in our lives Mulligan spent a lot of time getting loose. He was a Houdini wannabe. We'd been trying everything to contain him, and it sometimes took hours to get him back. I can't tell you how much time I spent trying to get that dog back to our house. He got off leashes, cables, out of harnesses, went through all our window screens, and climbed out my sunroof when it was open about six inches. He ignored the invisible electric fence Mike installed.

Thankfully, Mulligan was still on the block, and he came back to visit Phoenix, the dog who came to my door. I got Mulligan, thanked the man who let me know, and made it to work on time.

About a week later, again at 6:45, the same man knocked on the door. Yep. Mulligan was loose again, and this time he'd dragged Phoenix with him. The two were romping wild and free, and we managed to corral them back in. (As a side note, this was not the first time Mulligan had dragged another dog into his mischief. One time when we still had Kayla in our lives they had both been out on ropes. I opened the door to see Kayla sitting there, with several inches of rope attached to her collar and that was it. Mulligan was gone. He'd chewed through his rope, but before taking off decided to spring Kayla as well by chewing through hers. Good girl that she was she didn't want anything to do with that naughtiness!)

Ever since those first visits Mulligan and Phoenix have been fast friends and I like to joke that she is his girlfriend. She passes by our house twice each morning, and usually Mulligan is out during at least one of the visits.

Our family has also gotten to know Phoenix's parents, Dave and Mary Beth. Dogs are a great way to meet people!

Here's a picture from this summer of Mulligan and Phoenix. :-)