Utilizing the Keuka Sneak...

Princess Leia's Great Escape

          With all of the rain this week, I decided to put our puppy, Princess Leia, out on the doggy run off of the parsonage front porch for the very first time.  I had no idea that the excitement from this would scar both of us forever.

      When I think back to where this simple situation went wrong, I remember just being excited to watch Leia on the run for the first time. Although I have had pups my whole life, each one's personality is so totally different from another that it is like experiencing everything for the first time.  Leia is a corker!  For as bold as she is, sometimes she becomes incredibly anxious.  It was this anxiety that got the best of her as I prepared to attach her for the very first time.  So as I walked bent over to grab the hook from the run to attach to her collar, she came to a dead stop.  I was propelled forward staggering alone with her collar, as she remained on the porch unaware of her new found freedom.  When this epiphany finally dawned on her, all of a sudden, a maniacal look filled her eyes (see below representation from google images). 

from leadchanges.net

She realized that from my prone position, she would have unrestricted freedom if she ran for it, for the first time in her young life...no leashes to stunt her adventures, no fences to reign in her quests.  She was free at last!  She decided to go for it, and go for it, she did bounding from the porch and heading for the hills!  

I felt like a linebacker for the first time in my life as I quickly recovered from my shock and panic.  Leia was dogging and weaving like any running back from the NFL, but this time, I feared, her life might be on the line if she made her way out toward Route 20.  (If you want to learn more about how to use your "fancy footwork" to perpetrate an awesome juke like Leia did, please go to http://www.wikihow.com/Juke-in-Football.)  Leia analyzed my body language to anticipate my next move, and that caesura was what gave me my advantage.  As she flashed right, I came around her back and tackled her with my arms wrapped around her back haunches.  She was a slippery little sucker, but I held on for a least five seconds as she dragged me across the poop infested front lawn and down the sidewalk.  I lost my grasp just before she catapulted over the retaining wall.  I was sobbing.  I was screaming (cue in the famous Stella scream from Streetcar Named Desire), "LEIA!  LEIA!"  She was gone.  Gone forever, and it would be on my watch. 

 I was inconsolable.  Inconsolable, that is, until I remembered an ancient move that my sister Pattie told me about back when she was an undergraduate at the lovely Keuka College on the Finger Lakes in New York State.  "The Keuka Sneak", as it would come to be known by future generations, came into being when late one night some unscrupulous interlopers were running away from the Keuka security guards-  security guards whose average age was reported to be around 90 years old.  As these future felons were making their great escape, one of the security guards allegedly fell to the ground, while grabbing his heart and moaning under the guise of being in tremendous, and quite lethal, pain.  With his freedom in precarious danger, this trespasser returned to where the security guide lay to make sure the guard was just injured not actually dying.  Therein was the perpetrator's downfall and capture!  "The Keuka Sneak's" success always mystified me, but now I was prepared to unleash its powerful punch.

This inspiration came to me as I contemplated on my imminent doom of returning home empty handed without Leia, the apple of my husband's eye. "That's it!  I'll get her back with the Ol' Keuka Sneak,"  I silently thought to myself.  Immediately, I began rolling back and forth on the ground nursing my bruises and contusions, which were real, not bogus, at this point.  "OHHHHHHH!"  I moaned as Leia made her way to Lincoln.  But just as she was about to turn the corner, she stopped and looked back at me.  It was like she was plaintively suggesting, "Get up, Mommy.  Lose that collar and come with me.  Come on, Girl!  Come on, Mommy!"  But I didn't.

boomerscruzin.com

And slowly my mischief began to work.  To quote  Ralphie from The Christmas Story,  I just "lay there like a slug.  It was my only defense."  Slowly Princess Leia inched her way back toward me with a confused and curious look in her big brown eyes.  When she came within arms' reach, I snapped up to grab her around her midsection, slapped her collar around her neck and limped my way, with her in tow, back to the porch.

Sometimes an old strategy can serve us well in a new battle.  Freedom, while appealing, can come at a very high cost to us all!