If you have been following my blog, you know how proud I am of the Freecycle Gate I got.  It has made my life so much easier to go in and out from the north side of my house so I can walk to my garden and clothes line.  The north side is where Lily has her enclosed play area.  It has been great for her and myself when she wants to go outside.  I just open the door and out she goes.

I have had a make shift gate for the area so I could get in there to mow.  That was about as good as it got.  A couple years ago I inherited a free gate.  I was still dealing with health issues so the gate never got installed until this year.  I did it all with babysteps.

It is the best gift I have given myself this year because there is a flow about my home.  I can go in and out easily.  I just tell Lily to stay and she runs to the other side of her play area.  In fact it has become my play area too.  I now have a fire pit and I laid patio bricks down.

Today my mom came for a visit and brought her dog Lucy with her.  We put Lily and Lucy outside in the play area while Mom and I were visiting in the house in the kitchen.  The dogs were also doing their usual dance wanting outside and then wanting back in.  We decided to ignore them.

I got up from the kitchen table and walked out to my porch on the south side of my house.  I heard some whining and here it was Lucy wanting in from the south side.  You see she started out in the play area on the north side.

My next thought was, “Oh no, Lily!”  I ran to the play area and yes the gate was wide open.  Lily hadn’t quite figured out she could leave the play area until she was out and I said stay and then the neighbors’ chickens were out.  Lily has been barking at them from the inside of her play area and could not get to them, just bark.  Now, Lily is out and there is a chicken.  If you know anything about Lily, you would have to just imagine her chasing this chicken!  Earlier in the year, Lily was wrangling garter snakes and I took the fun out of that by putting cedar mulch down to keep the snakes away and it has worked.  Now, Lily was out of her play area realizing she could chase this chicken!  I really could not believe how fast she was!  She almost caught the chicken twice!

I thought, she is going to kill this chicken!  I am running to the neighbors door knocking and running in saying “Lily is out and chasing the chicken!”  Anna didn’t really believe me because Lily never escapes but the chickens have before.  They are growing so much that just yesterday they clipped their wings so they can’t fly out of their area anymore.  My neighbor figure she had her problem solve too.   All I knew was Lily had one of the brown chickens cornered and I was trying to grab Lily!  Finally I got ahold of her collar to pull her out and my neighbor was there to grab her chicken.  I thought for sure Lily had bitten the chicken and wounded it but all she got were feathers.  Lily doesn’t have her upper Eye Teeth anymore.  They had to be pulled because of poor teeth.  That is one reason I don’t let Lily go about freely because she would never be able to defend herself with another dog.