Judge

A couple of weeks ago, I had the privilage of spending some time with a male named Judge. No, not that kind of male, Judge is an 11 year old black labrador.
My friend Stephanie (Judge's mom) needed to go out of town to take care of her grandfather for a few weeks and she asked me if I would be able to take care of Judge one of the weeks that she was gone.
Now, not having taken care of Judge before, Stephanie thought it would be a good idea for me to come over a couple of times, so that Judge would get used to me and actually let me in the house when it was my turn to come and dog/house-sit. So we did that and everything went good...then came the time for me to come by myself.
My friend Mel had watched Judge the week before, so the day that I was coming, she left Judge outside in the fenced in backyard, so that I could let him in the house when I got home. So I got to the house and went to see how Judge was doing, I was greeted with a waging tail and a low growl! Thankfully, I had not opened the screen door yet. "Wow, this isn't good!" was my thought, "maybe I should leave him out there for a little bit and continue to unpack my car" was my next thought. So as I brought different stuff in, I would continue to go to the screen door and see if the mood had changed and maybe I had moved up to the "pals" stage. The car was unpacked and Judge was still not happy. So I thought, "how about I call my good friend Mel!" So I called her and she offered to come over when she got off of work, which would be 8:30pm. I was glad that she was going to come over, but it was only 6:30pm and I thought I should maybe try one more idea. I knew Judge loved walks, so I suggested through the screendoor if he would like to go on a walk. Well, I do believe I had peaked his interest, due to the rising of his ears an a little tilt of the head. Just to makesure he understood what I said, I suggested it one more time and yes, this was definitely something that he wanted to do and the reason I knew this was because he was now hopping at the front door and barking. I ran and got the leash and decided that now he could come in the house.
Well, because I was so happy that he wasn't growling at me anymore and that he really wanted to go on a walk. I completely forgot to change into other shoes, so Judge dragged me all over the neighborhood in my sandals that had about a 3" heal on them, nice!!!
On our way out of the house, I had grabbed a big stick that Stephanie walks with, she had informed me that I wouldn't need to use it, however, if I felt more comfortable with it, there it was. So I decided to take it, just incase. Thankfully I didn't need to use it, however there was a little chiwawa, however you spell it,you know the Taco Bell dog. (As a side note, I hate those dogs. I know that "hate" is a strong word, but I really do "hate" them) Anyway, one of those dogs came running out at us like it was going to attack us, Judge just sniffed it and kept walking, I was winding up my foot, to send it airbourne, but one of the neighbor girls came and got it before it met my foot and took it home. I really think I could of cleared it over one of the houses!! As we got towards the end of the last street before we headed home, I saw this cage, now let me tell you, the last time that I saw cage this size, was about 10 or 15 years ago, when my family took a trip to South Dakota and we went to "Bear Country". Yes that type of cage was around a grizzly bear. So you can only image what kind of dog was living in that cage. All of a sudden, out steps "Cujo" - for those of you not familiar with "Cujo", he was a large St. Bernard, that had rabbies. Even though this dog did not look as bad as "Cujo", nor did he try to get to us, I did inform Judge, that if that dog had somehow gotten out, that "he was on his own"!
When we got back to the house, I had decided to start supper and I needed to make a couple of calls. I had forgotten my phone charger for the house, so when I was getting off the phone, I ran outside to use the car charger. As I shut the house door, I remembered that the door was still locked and that the key was still in the house. Yes, I had locked myself out of the house. The first night and only about 2 hours into watching Judge, not a good start!
Now not only had I locked myself out of the house and Judge in the house, but do you remember my comment in the last paragraph about me starting supper, yeah, I had turned the oven on! Sooooo...I called Mel again, I wasn't able to reach her. So I thought I would call another friend, Christa to see if she had a spare key. She didn't have a spare nor did she know of anyone that had one. But, when I told her that the oven was on, she said she would be right over!!! :-)
Even though Christa was on her way over, I wasn't sure what we were going to do with neither one of us having a key. Now we could have broken or window, although I didn't want to do that for two reasons, I didn't want to pay for a window and I wasn't sure how excited Judge would be about someone coming in through the window, even if I had taken him for a walk. So I called Mel a couple more times, still not able to get a hold of her, I decided to have her paged. When I told her what I did and after she was done laughing, she informed me that she had a spare key and that she was on her way. Mel told me when she got there, that one of her co-workers wanted to know "if I was going to make it!" We both laughed hard on that!
Thankfully, that was all the excitement there was for the rest of the time that I was there and Judge and I got along wonderfully. He really is a great dog, he has a great personality, he made me laugh on several occasions. Who needs a man, I'm just gonna get a dog!
Stephanie has done such a great job with him, I'm thinking about getting a dog myself and then have her train him until he's like Judge and I then I will take it from there!! I haven't talked to Stephanie about that yet though!!!