Last night we went out to my parent's house in Wimberley to have dinner with some of my mom's family who was in town.  Ralph and Janet were there from Danville, Illinois where they run a very big family farm.  I had not seen them since I was a little kid, so it was a lot of fun to hear about life on the farm. 

A funny story involving Marley...

Ralph and Janet were telling us about their old dog Amos.  Amos was a big shaggy dog (think, "The Shaggy Dog") who looked and acted more like a human with a dog suit on.  Every day, he would join Ralph on the tractor, lean back in the passenger seat, and put his right paw up on the window sill as if he were just chillin'.  In the middle of the story, I heard something outside.  Since I had put Marley in the dog kennel with my parents' dog Cutter earlier that night, I got up to go and check on the noise.  I never went outside because I was too interested in Ralph's stories about their incredible dog Amos.  So, I sat down to listen to more of the stories.  A few minutes later we hear a noise inside the house and my mom says "the door opened!"  Before you knew it, in trots Marley greeting us as if he had not seen us in two weeks!  That dog had climbed over the chain link fence and somehow opened my parents' door to come and be reunited with us!  I should have been somewhat concerned and upset at him, but I was actually proud of him.  We've always known he had the talent to be a climber since the first week we had him and he would scale the doggy gate as a little tike.  Now, we have more evidence of this talent and more proof that he'd rather just be with people.  I'm thankful he didn't hurt himself and did not run away.  Hopefully he's not a bad influence on Cutter. 

Here's the Escape Artist himself