New Found Talent

As some of you may know our sweet Gracee is half Catahoula. Catahoulas are working dogs from Louisiana. They can hunt and herd. They hunt basically anything: deer, hog, squirrel, mountain lions, raccoon, and the list goes on. They are also known as “cat” dogs, because they can be trained to climb trees. Now our dog is only half Catahoula and has never known how to do this. Well and we didn’t know how to train her to do this…why would we want our dog to know how to climb trees? She can jump like nothing else. Her last owner trained her to jump into his arms. He called it “hugging”. It took us a bit to get her out of this habit. People would walk in our front door and she would “hug” them.
Well this past weekend she spent a lot of time in my parent’s backyard. Unlike at our house she can’t get under the fence, because they have a concrete strip all the way around the back yard that the fence sits on top of.
We got back to my parents house on Friday night with her greeting us in the driveway. We thought she just got out at the gate by the driveway. Sunday she was back at my parents house during church since Rodney and Virginia were going to be taking her home for the night. When my sister was coming over to church she saw Gracee out front and put her back in the backyard and while Amy was walking over to the church she was greeted by her again. She thought she was jumping over but I still thought she was getting out at the gate. After worship I went to get her back in the house. Instead of just putting her in the house I put her back in the backyard to see if she would get out while I was watching. Yep, she climbed up over the fence. The 1st jump I saw her head pop up, on the next jump there she came. Her whole body came right over the fence. Then she just stood there looking at me. Like ”look mommy, I did it. Aren’t you proud?”
We will be getting her a chain so when she needs to stay out in the back we can just chain her up. Not near the fence line of course. I don’t want her hanging herself.