Another Dog Named Skip

The White Family live in a white house. The back of their yard is separated from our side yard by our chain-link fence. The Whites are the ones I mentioned in an earlier blog posting about their house was haunted by a Cheryl, a previous resident who died there and they had a priest to perform an exorcism.

They have three dogs. They first bought Skip. Skip is a terrier. He looks something like a Jack Russell. He is named Skip because he looks very similar to the dog in the movie A Dog Named Skip.

After Skip established himself the Whites got another dog they named Bing. This dog is a very small little thing that is all covered in hair that has ribbons and sometimes perfume. But not so much perfume anymore. Usually Skip can not stand the little dog but when they put on the perfume, evidently, Skip is a keen smeller like dogs are suppose to be, so Skip perceived Bing as being a totally different dog…. And VA-VA-VOOM!!!
Skip tried putting the make on Bing.

Skip also tries putting the make on any human leg. Many times I have seen the man White walk limping-style in the back yard while Skip was completely hugging the man’s leg and hunching.

Skip barks a lot. He is very hyper and very nervous…. not unlike Barney Fife on the Andy Griffin Show. When either I am out in the yard or the neighbor on the other side of them are out in the yard Skip will stand at the fence and bark and bark fiercely and shows his teeth in a threatening way.

The Whites have a dog door. Skip and the other dogs come and go in and out the house as they want. One day the Whites were gone and left the dogs there. When they returned on their answering machine or were a bunch of calls of Skip barking wildly. Evidently, the man on the other side of them went out in the yard with his cell phone and held it towards Skip barking. The message was clear.

It happened a couple other times. The Whites decided to get a privacy fence for that side.

He could not see the neighbors on the other side of the privacy fence, so out of sight out of mind, I guess. Our fence is a chain-link fence, so he still barked wildly at me every time I was in the back yard (notice I said “barked”).

Skip can jump high and straight up when he puts his mind to it. He doesn’t leap with his hind legs doing the springing or anything – he just springs up high. On occasion I have walked between the Whites’ house and their neighbors house to get to the other street to visit or something and Skip would go bananas barking from their large front window. I could see him spring up, maybe 5 feet up in the air, barking, then fall out of sight then immediately spring back up, as if he was on a trampoline.

Every Skip would see me near the fence he would almost burst a gut barking. It seemed he could not stand the sight of me. Sometimes he would be poking around their back yard smelling and then catch my movement or catch my scent and go wild barking…. That was the way Skip did things… terrible temper.

Yesterday, I was out by the fence and I saw that Skip and the Whites’ new little puppy, a little Schnauzer come running out and got close to me. They were playing with each other. Skip seemed to be enjoying being a big brother to the little puppy. He looked over at me and didn’t even get upset. He kept on playing.

I made a noise in the brush I was dealing with and again he just looked over my way for a moment and went back playing.

The little Schnauzer would smell around the grass and find a little stick or something small and run up to Skip and show it to him and Skip would playfully pretend he was going to take it away from him. Then they would slowly walk around and sniff and inspect things… occasionally playfully and lightly biting on each other. Skip looked happy and content.

What a change!