Penie Gets Revenge

Well...after our session with the trainer, we decided to crate-train Ollie and PenPen, so that we can eliminate the "everything plush is a wee-wee pad" problem in our house. The only problem is that we are going to be away from the house for 10-12 hours at a time. Really, we shouldn't crate the dogs for longer than 4 hours, so we are probably going to have to hire a walker to come in the mid-afternoon. (If you do a cost analysis, things chewed plus the cost of weewee pads < the cost of hiring a walker for 5 hours a week).

So anyway, I went to PetSmart and bought two plastic crates that would be comfortable, but not too big. We tried them out by putting JumBones inside. The dogs were more than happy to oblige, and we slammed the doors shut. They stayed in for about three hours, chomping to their hearts' content, while we were home and in the same room. We wanted them to get accustomed to the crates in a "happy" way, instead of thinking of them as punishment.

THEN, we had to get the dogs on a real feeding schedule. But Penny can't be near Ollie when he eats, or she will go ballistic, snarling and attacking him. Even if she has her own food bowl...so I wake up, put Pen outside, give her a bowl of food, then put Ollie in the living room--out of eyeshot of Penny the Terrible--and they eat for about 10 mins. Then they both go outside for a bathroom break. Hopefully, we can get them trained to want to go outside more than inside...

Well, I don't know when this happened, but the dogs took revenge on the crates. I think they heard us talking about what we were going to do to them. When I woke up this morning, I saw that one of the plastic clips that holds the crate together was chomped to a flattened indistinguishable mess. They also went to town on the corners of the crates themselves.

And the trainer's "place" platform.

Bad.

Dogs.