Fall 2017  Saber Tails 41    

Petit Basset Griffon Vendéen Club of America

the Peebs, she would rather die than be separated from us.  Running away is sim-

ply NOT in her vocabulary.  We also had 7 leashes in the room in case we needed 

to round up dogs and get out.  In the den, just outside our bedroom door, slept 

Apple’s litter of 5 five-week old puppies with a laundry basket nearby to serve as 

their emergency escape pod.  Every single one of us sat straight up in bed at 1:34!  

Bill hurried down the hallway to check the house and I ran to check all the dogs 

and the saltwater tanks.  With the power out, we started up the battery operated 

air stones as aquarium life supports.  Bill made it back to bed shortly after me and 

announced that a tree had fallen on the house.  That’s not something you hear 

every day!

In the morning, I was saddened to see that we had lost two giant, old pecan trees.  

One was twisted off about 20 feet up and the other had been pushed over into 

the attic and garage with the canopy resting on about 1/3 of the roof.  The trees 

had obviously been hit by a small tornado as the one tree looked like someone 

literally grabbed it at the base and the top and twisted it into until the top came 

free.    We were lucky and an amazing tree crew came to our rescue and had the 

tree completely cut off the roof by nightfall.  Unfortunately, lightning and rain 

became fierce before they were able to cover the roof with tarps. To avoid flood-

ing in the main part of the house, 

holes were poked in the garage ceiling so the water could drain through and 

not spread across the entire structure.  The tree roots had broken the water 

pipe from our well so we were initially without water.  Another wonderful 

man came and hooked us back up.  A tree in the house, isn’t good, but we 

considered ourselves lucky.  We had electricity, water, and an amazing story 

to tell.  The dogs had their ultimate playground.  The tree had been cut up 

into hundreds of pieces that had simply been rolled off the roof in the rush 

to get the job done before the next wave of the storm.  Three sides of our 

house had tree branch and log formations that reminded me of snowbanks 

tunneled out.  To the dogs, these were literal amusement parks.  Diving in 

head first, they spent the weekend tremendously entertained. 

Our story was just beginning.  The hurricane stalled dumping an unprece-

dented record-breaking 51 inches of rain in just a few days.  Sunday, the pre-

dictions came in that the Brazos River would crest five feet higher than it had 

the year before during the historic ‘Memorial Day Flood.’  In May 2016, we 

were the only home on our street that did not flood…the water came within a few inches, but didn’t get inside.  An ad-

ditional 5 feet of water would definitely mean our house was getting wet.  Still…the river wasn’t predicted to crest until 

Wednesday or Thursday so we 

had plenty of time.  And I had 

blind faith that things would 

work out.  Living less than a 

half mile from the river, we 

don’t have a lot of wiggle 

room.  We’re on the bank that 

doesn’t flood, but if the river 

level rises high enough, it 

backs up into the creeks and 

streams that surround us…

and just keeps coming.  The 

only thing between us and the 

The water was already high on Sunday afternoon when 

our rancher neighbor rounded up his cattle and loaded 

them onto trucks.  We enjoyed watching the dogs jump 

on and off the backs of the horses and work the cows 

where the water was shallow enough for them to move 

around.  

Loading up the dogs and puppies and as much as we could grab before 9 am as we evacuated to our friends house  - 

Thank you to the Sullivans

Monroe diving head first into the tree debris

Cont’d on p 44