FREEDOM!!!!!

Forget the chick flicks*. I'm an action-adventure kind of gal. Arnold Schwartzeneger, Bruce Willis, any James Bond (although I am a bit partial to Sean Connery, even bald that man was the hunkiest thing out there in my humble opinion), so it goes without saying that I loved Mel Gibson in Braveheart. (I've actually loved him in almost every movie he's done, but that was my favorite of his.) The part where he paints his face half-blue, raises his arm in the air and yells "Freedom", well, that just makes this female's heart go pitter-patter every single time I watch it.

So we were ready to walk out the door to dinner last night, at a nearby restaurant. We'd only be gone an hour or so, and I got ready to put the dogs in their holding pen. Dubbie, our 92 lb. golden retriever, on temporary loan from our son and DIL, is almost two years old. After learning the hard way with our last dog, who got too much freedom to roam, and spent most of it chewing the daylights out of anything he could, Dubbie has spent a lot of quality time behind bars. Sofas are expensive to replace, as are hard hats, work boots, wooden grids in french doors, bases of kitchen tables and chairs, and we've replaced them all with previous dogs.

But Dubbie really seems to have beat the chewing habit - and he's not the one who ate all the previously listed items. The other two dogs did, because one of us had too big a heart and let them run loose in our house, not wanting to damage their psyche, while we were away. Don't get me started on what it did to MY psyche to phone home from Cancun and have our two kids tell us 'the dog ate the sofa. No really, Mom, he A.T.E. the sofa. Down to the wood.' And at $5 a minute to receive this news, then coming home to a completely destroyed sofa and a $500 phone bill, well, that was just a quick way to re-enter reality, after being in Caribbean denial.

So I asked DH, "what do you think, should we let him stay out while we're gone? We'll only be gone about an hour, and surely he won't eat anything in that short a period of time?" DH responded, in much the same way you would with letting a child climb on the school bus, or handing them keys to the family car, "Well, we've got to do it sometime."

We left the two beasts loose in the house, dimmed the lights so as not to shine a light on anything that might look remotely tasty and was not in the dog bowl.

As we drove away I got this mental image of Mel Gibson, with a lot of fur and long ears, raising one paw in the air and shouting, "Freedom" as he tore through the house, up and down the stairs exploring areas not ever before known to him. (Seriously, look at the photo - can't you see a bit of a hairy dog in him? And you have to wonder, is this what started the whole dreadlock thing?)

When we returned home, just like the Christmas carol, "All was calm", and I went to bed last night, not only thankful for all the regular stuff, but for a sofa that had remained in one piece. Now we move on to how to let him wander around the front yard without tearing off after some squirrel or chipmunk, with me looking like a complete fool, running after him. I have a feeling this 'Freedom' could go to his big ole hairy head.

*I did LOVE Mamma Mia but that might be in part because Pierce Brosnan was in it, and yes his singing was atrocious, but when you look that good, you don't really need to be able to sing!