When we bought our house here in Nashville, Wes and I were very specific that it have a fenced-in backyard. Lucy is over nine years old, and for the first six, we lived in homes and apartments that didn't have outdoor space. We always had to take her for walks -- in Chicago, run her out in blizzards and drifts and freezing wind and rain -- to go to the bathroom, and she couldn't enjoy just being outside.
When we first moved here, I tried leaving Lucy in the backyard for short periods of time. I walked Oliver in the stroller down to the popsicle store, and in the fifteen minutes it took for us to get there and back, the do had escaped and a neighbor was returning her to our yard. Other times, she would bark incessantly. So I gave up.
A few weeks ago, though, I was running to pick the kids up from school and gave it another try. I was gone thirty minutes at most, and she did fine. No barking as I left, no barking when I got back, stayed in the backyard seemingly content. With the weather getting nicer in the past week, I've left her there even more. This week, she's spent entire days outside in the crisp, cool, almost fall weather.
It's nice for us, and even nicer for her, to get to enjoy the great outdoors that is our moderately sized yard. She's happiest when she can run -- near the house where Wes grew up, out by the cabin where we went this summer for vacation -- but she'll make do now if it's all she's got.
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