A good friend of mine at work just lost her two year old Lab yesterday. She was late coming in to work because she thought he had somehow escaped their yard after her daughter let him out first thing in the morning. She spent the better part of an hour driving all over her neighborhood looking for him, called Animal Control, and put out an alert online in case he was found. She went home again at lunchtime to look, and discovered that the poor dog had somehow climbed the ladder to their above ground pool, fallen in under the pool cover and drowned. They had a fence around the pool and a weighted pool cover, so he really had to work to get up there (she's thinking that there must have been birds on top of the pool cover). At any rate, it's a terribly sad loss, and I've been sick to my stomach at the thought of how frightening that poor guy's last few moments must have been.
It just goes to show that they really are like children in the sense that you can turn your back for only a few minutes only to have something tragic occur. It's inspired me to really make sure that I not only suprvise my dogs' outside time more closely, and that I need to make sure that my backyard is as fool proof as it can be. Hug your babies closely today. What a tragedy...