Hou-darn-dini

Darth Vader is a bona fide escape artist. The duplex we're renting has a fenced back yard - at least, at first glance. It has chain-link across the back, and field fence on the other two sides. Field fence has holes that are about 5" x 6." I thought Vader's big goofy head wouldn't fit through the relatively small gaps.

I thought wrong.

At first, I thought he was escaping via a gap where the chain-link meets the field fence. I used zip-ties to pull the two fences together. Problem solved?

Not hardly.

I came home last week, and Vader was standing behind the gate, just like he was supposed to. My neighbor came walking across the street.

"Your dog is a liar," he stated.
"Excuse me?"
"In the morning, he waits until you've turned the corner, then he squirms through that fence. In the afternoon, he squirms back in - usually two seconds before you turn onto the street."
Darn.

Apparently a previous renter had a similar problem, because there are a few sections of fence that have an overlay of chicken wire. So off to Home Depot for a roll of the stuff. We strung up the chicken wire on all sections of fence not previously covered. Satisfied that our yard was now as heavily fortified as Fort Knox, we patted ourselves on the back and went back inside.

The next day, the dog got out.

It turns out that the previous chicken-wire installers made a critical error - they installed the wire on the outside of the field fence. All Vader had to do was push his cold wet nose through the field fence, and the chicken wire gapped out. Voila! Vanish!

This is war.