Because she had been the victim of a drive by back in the day, Kylie had a pretty serious aversion to loud noises like thunder and of course fireworks. So our plans for pretty much every Fourth of July were to hang out with Kylie and turn up the tv to drown out the amateur pryrotechnics.

But a couple of years ago we went up to visit friends at the mountain home of Ferdinand (great dane) and Fiona (chihuahua) – quite a pair.

ferdinand fiona

Then the human folk decided to go into the tiny mountain town for dinner and to catch the professional fireworks display. We figured the dogs wouldn’t hear a thing several miles away, but that they definitely needed to be separated. Ferdinand was a fifty pound puppy, who was a little too friendly and excited about absolutely everything, while Kylie and Fiona were both.. well, let’s face it.. just plain bitchy and often didn’t play well with others. So Fiona was in the back bedroom, Kylie was in the sunporch, and Ferdinand had run of the rest of the house.

The two girls and friends were out for several hours and returned to find three dogs of various sizes, standing there, tails wagging, waiting to greet us.. TOGETHER!!

We were all wide eyed with dropped jaws and momentarily panicked. But nobody had so much as a scratch and the house had not so much as a misplaced throw pillow. The best we could figure is either they could hear the fireworks and thought there was safety in numbers so they got together to duck & cover. Or more likely, friendly Ferdinand was lonely. We figured it wouldn’t be too difficult for him to use his big nose or giant head to open the sliding door and let Kylie in from the porch; but we have no idea who or how they managed to turn the doorknob to liberate little Fiona from the bedroom. We asked them, but they weren’t talkin’!

They were just celebrating their independence!

July 4th 07

July 4th 07