Barbi (center), the heroine of the story, and her two buddies

Trip out it was early Saturday morning.... Fed the dogs, packed them in the car and drove to the boat to take us to Finland. After I had gotten the cage for Sundabish Streisand, Barbi (she is Houdini reincarnated), out of the car, it turned out that the boat cabin was to small for the cage to be set up! The boat was full and they had no more free bigger cabins. I had to find a carpenter to come remove the bedside table! After that we were able to fit the cage in.

I then took all the dogs and other stuff up from the car to the cabin. I had to go three rounds to the car - and they close the car deck 30 minutes after the boat has left the dock!! Barely had time to do it! I locked Barbi in the cage and to catch my breath and to settle down a bit, I decided to have a look around the boat. 30 minutes later this is what I hear screaming out of the loudspeaker: "Can the owner of the three boxer dogs please come to the second cabin deck straight away - the dogs are running loose!"

Three! Oh my!! I ran down (they still had time to call me twice more!), and when I came there they had managed to lock the dogs into the shower room. When I opened the door there they were, three very tired and very happy boxers, looking very pleased with themselves and to see me. The dogs were exhausted from trying to catch Barbi (I don't think they managed), and Barbi was just very pleased with all the trouble she had managed to stir.

She had managed to open her locked cage, had then proceeded to open the cabin door and had led the boys on a nice "chase" around the boat! This time I locked her in the cage and put two leather leashes tightly around it to hold it. I then put another leash around the door knob and secured it outside the door, with the door closed. This seemed to work because the dogs stayed in anyhow, but it took forever to get into the cabin and to walk the dogs and to secure it again.

Saturday evening, at 8 pm, we landed in Turku, Abo, Finland. I had to get all the dogs and the cage back in the car, and this time I did not have the Chevrolet van, but a rather small Opel with two built in cages that I had borrowed from a friend. It was hard to fit everything in. I had to have one dog very periously on the back seat more or less under two cages! The show was in Helsinki so now I had to drive 170 km to Helsinki, and I just realised that I had no f.....g idea where I was going there! I had no telephone number to the hotel, nor any address - all I had was the name.

The snow was sleeting down rather heavily and made it hard to see more than a few feet in front of your head lights - not a very nice or safe trip! I was hunched over the steering wheel trying to see the road! In Helsinki I managed to pay a taxi driver to drive ahead of me to the hotel -- quite an act of genius I thought.

We arrived around midnight, and now the dogs, the cages, the lalala, had to come out of the car and into the hotel room. Trying to set the alarm clock for wake up at 6.30 (this was done with the TV control), I accidently managed to accept a movie charge-- don't ask me how since I do not speak or read Finnish! I didn't even know this until next morning when they charged me 60 FIM for a movie I never saw! They refused to take it off, but very kindly said that I could watch it if before noon-- with telescope eyes I guess since I had to be at the dog show!

The dogs, the cages, all the whatevers..... you know the drill by now - into the car and we managed to find the show place and unpack everything again. Trip home was late Sunday afternoon. After packing everything into the car, again I tried to follow a map drawn by a friend to find my way to the boat in Helsinki. At least I did not have to drive back to Abo to take a ferry home. This was the only thing going well on this trip, I only took the wrong turn once!

I got the cage and Barbi out of the car and found my cabin -- a much bigger one this time and the cage fit in without a problem. Feeling a bit better and believing (how stupid can one get?) that now since everything seemed to work so well - it would continue. I put Barbi in and went to get the other two dogs out of the car. When I came back to the cabin I was met by disaster!

The cabin door was wide open, the cage was in pieces -- and I do mean pieces!-- and no Barbi in sight. Again I had the pleasure, the first time it really was a pleasure because at least now I knew where she was, to be called by a loudspeaker "Can the owner of a boxer dog please come to the information desk".

Oh my, again! I put the boys in the cabin and tried to secure the door, just in case they had learned something from Barbi, and ran to the information desk. They called me like six times before I got there -- let me tell it like this -- everyone on the boat now knew that Barbi was loose on the boat. Barbi had a small rope around her neck and was patiently sitting and waiting for me beside a boat stewardess' legs.

They told me that she had been running towards the entrance and had been halfway down the gangway before they had managed to stop her. She had played catch with them too. If they had not gotten hold of her she would probably have managed to run ashore --and this was just minutes before the boat left! They would not have waited for me to find her, and she would have been lost in Helsinki! Shudder!

I thanked evryone that helped in the chase and chased her back to the cabin. She acted very pleased to see the cabin and the boys again. The bitch!! With all the leashes I managed to rebuild the cage, somewhat. It was a new cage, had just been used a couple of times, and now I will have to get another one. I put Barbi in and put the cage cover over the cage so I didn't have to see her. I was so mad it was better for both her and my sake that I did not see her at that moment. If she had laughed at me God knows what I'd do!

And she can laugh, the only boxer I know that actually laughs. There is no doubt about it! Her lips go up and she goes cha cha cha. Using the last leash, I tied it around the bathroom door handle and pulled the door shut behind me as I went out the cabin. It fit nicely so Barbi could not get to the cabin door handle. I smacked the cabin door shut and secured the handle and the leash over a hand rail outside - just in case. Phui.