A few weeks ago I share the story of Fred just walking off the edge of our raised patio, even though I’d told the Nearly Perfect Husband to keep his eye on our blind dog because maybe he would, you know…

Walk off the edge of the patio.

I got a few questions about Fred and assured folks that Fred was totally fine, and is not actually super old and feeble, just blind, and we are treating him as normally as we can because we do not want him to look at himself as a victim or ‘less than’ either of the other dogs because we think that is important for his little yellow psyche.

I even googled “blind dog ski jump lessons” because we have kind of a lot of snow right now and if he knew how to ski jump then he would be perfectly comfortable sticking a landing if, you know, he walked off the patio again. And also? As a plus? What would be more confidence-building for Fred than if he could saunter into the kitchen with a gold medal from PyeongChang in 2018?

Nothing. That’s what.

But until then, we will continue to watch him closely on the patio.

Which is what I was doing the other day, when I let him out to pee, and then I watched him and then I called him back inside where he ate his cheese and went to lie down in front of a toasty-warm fire.

And about five minutes later, I opened up the same door and called HRH Princess Blaze and Marshal Dillon Dingle.

And Blaze did not come.

Like, at all.

Instead she barked like a crazy, inbred Royal (which she is decidedly not) and ran up the steps toward me, and then back down to the patio.

Then up, then down.

Up.

Down.

Like Lassie when Timmy was stuck in a well…

Wait.

So I stepped out the door and Blaze got all kinds of more excited and ran to where I needed to pay attention.

Which was right where Fred had walked off the patio just weeks ago.

Sure enough…

Marshal Dillon Dingle had walked off the patio, and was stuck.

When Fred walked off the patio, he fell in three feet of poofy, powdery snow, and made a little nest.

Now Marshal was in the same spot, but five more feet of snow had fallen since then, and  then compressed itself into, oh I dunno…

cement.

So there was Marshal Dillon Dingle, leaping and barking in the equivalent of a Lassie/Timmy well and I was all alone in the house except for Granny and Grampa (the Old Yankee Man, who uses a walker).

So here is the hole:

That fence you see in the upper left corner is five feet tall.

What you can’t easily discern is that the sides of the hole closer to you are eight feet tall, because of the raised patio.

So Marshal was stuck in the hole.

I had to rescue him.

Because I was a wicked driven hero, that’s why.

So I put my hand on the birch tree and tried to gently ease my right leg down onto some snow that was not all the way in the hole, thinking it would hold me.

It did not.

So then I was in a sort of diagonal sideways split, with one leg on the 8 foot high snow-covered raised patio and the other sunk into the snow that wasn’t even holding me really. I was just sort of split-hanging there, held by the leg stuck on the patio.

Also, Marshal Dillon Dingle was now so excited that I had decided to keep him company that he was licking my hair and corn-cob grooming my cheeks.

So I finally got over the shock of my predicament and allowed myself to slowly slide, still in a split, into the snow next to Marshal.

Who was clearly expecting help.

So I tush-pushed him up and out of the hole and he seemed very happy about that.

And he didn’t even leave me! He was the assured and rescue-y ShepHerd I always through he could be!

So here I was, in a 2 foot by 3 foot hole, with eight feet of snow and a stone wall in front of me, six feet on either side of me, a five foot wall of snow and a fence behind me.

And Marshal was going crazy trying to alert the thumb-wielding world that I was stuck.

He was leaping toward me and away from me, barking his head off, licking my raised hands while I tried to get a hand and toe hold on the wall.

At one point, when that failed, I turned around, thinking that maybe trying to get over the fence was a better idea.

That’s when I saw it.

Marshal’s blue Jolly Ball was high up on the mound of snow just behind me.

Huh.

So I gave Marshal his Jolly Ball and he took it and turned around and went away and I couldn’t see him from my spot in the hole anymore.

Finally, I decided I could not stay there and make a nest like Fred did, because no one knew I was there and no one was coming to help.

Even if I yelled really loud I don’t think the Nearly Perfect Husband could have heard me because it was in, like, Evansville Indiana.

So I turned to my left and started walking into the snow wall.

I walked and pushed snow away from my head with my hands, and snow got in my boots and I dug and walked and nearly lost a boot several times but made a path to one of my other already-made paths.

And when I got back to the patio, Fred was already outside, having pushed his way through the door, most likely in response to Blaze’s real call for help (vs. Marshal’s totally non-helpful barking for his Jolly Ball).

I think that Fred was on his way to save me, and I felt kind of guilty about it.

Because I wrote a silly post when he walked off the patio, and now here he was responding to the emergency call to save me from my life threatening situation.  Which maybe makes Fred a blind superhero just like Ben Affleck played in that movie that didn’t do very well with Jennifer Garner in it (but at least he fell in love so that’s good).

And Karma?

Well, you know exactly what Karma was.

Yep.

A b*tch.

Thanks for readin’.

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