Dog Breaks Through Fence So He Can Finally Meet His Next-Door Neighbor
“It made me happy to see them so happy. Just neighbors being neighborly.”
Bailey was rescued during Hurricane Harvey in 2017 and placed with a foster family, who quickly decided to adopt her. Ever since then, she’s loved running around her fenced-in backyard. If she wasn’t playing with her dog brother, she would just run around alone — until her neighbors got a dog, too.
As soon as Shep joined his family next door to Bailey, he started playing in his backyard too, and after a while, the pair began to discover each other.
“They first really started noticing each other around May,” Tessa Llewellyn Holmes, Bailey’s mom, told The Dodo. “It started with some digging, and I noticed they had each dug low enough to touch noses under the fence. They’d also run [along] the fence together when they were both outside. It was playful and fun.”
Shep and Bailey seemed to know from the very beginning that they were destined to be friends — they just hadn’t figured out a way to actually be together face-to-face yet.
“You could tell they wanted to meet,” Holmes said. “Bailey is very athletic and has also learned to jump into my 4-foot-high raised flower bed and peek over the fence at him.”
One day, Shep and Bailey were playing together through the fence as usual when they realized there was a spot in the fence where some boards were loose. All it took was a little maneuvering — and suddenly, Shep was together with Bailey in her yard at last.
“We actually didn’t notice him in the backyard because I had the curtains closed,” Holmes said. “I heard a jingle that sounded different from Bailey’s collar so I looked outside and was surprised to see him.”
The pair were so overjoyed to finally play together for real, and ran around the yard for three hours. Eventually, Holmes figured it was time to get Shep back home again, but after waiting for so long to finally be together, the pair weren’t ready to part ways just yet.
“I tried to put Shep back in his yard and prop the boards back up by leaning a big log against it, but he was back within five minutes,” Holmes said.
Holmes eventually went over and let Shep’s family know what had happened. Now they're hoping to get them together for more playdates — which Shep and Bailey will definitely be happy about.
“He is so sweet and both of them were so tired after playing yesterday,” Holmes said. “It made me happy to see them so happy. Just neighbors being neighborly.”