The Crate Escape Chronicles

My first couple of days and weeks with E&A, I was really reserved. I sat out front with them on Halloween while a few kids came by looking for candy handouts. I let them pet me and was well behaved. One of the neighbor boys, Sammy, even gave me a huge dog hug (I'm not a bear therefore it wasn't a bear hug) and I just soaked it up.

In my first couple of days I tried to meet and play with one of the neighbor hounds, Blessie, but that didn't go too well. Everyone seemed to think that I was not happy about playing nice and dragged me away!

There was one day that a spider set off a motion sensor and there were sirens and all sorts of noises while E&A were away at work. So until they could figure out what was wrong with the sensor, they turned off that one sensor. Being the smart fella that I am, I used that as an opportunity to explore the house and do some "redecorating." I figued out that if I bounced around enough, I could unhook some of the latches on my crate and with a little pushing, pulling and houdini tricks, I was able to squeeze out of my crate.

What do you think of my design style?

A big thanks to E for documenting my handywork! Although he considered the shoe trees and his book to be great casualties of my "antics" and didn't seemed too pleased with me. As big as I am, I figured out how to hide under the bed real quick!

I've worked on a couple of other noteworthy projects since then. Two days later I actually got myself stuck in the top half of the crate door and bent things up a little bit. No worries though, I was able to pull the whole front end of my crate in and then walked right out. Redecorating time!!!

Now E&A had great motivation to keep me IN my crate while they were out. So E bought a bunch of clips and secured all the edges of my crate. I haven't gotten out since! But I did manage to kick/slide the tray thingy halfway out once. Then I didn't know what to do with it and the edge of it was smack dab in the middle of my space, so I treated it just as any tresspasser should be treated. Tear it to pieces!!! What fun!

Oh, but I had one more antic up my sleeve in the crate department. Once the plastic pan was out of the way, I had open acces to the carpet scrap that was under my crate. The grid of wire on the bottom is probably 6" by 6" and I found a way to get a hook on it. Pulled the whole 4'x4' square of carpet through a 6" hole. Triumph!!!

Now it's just me and the cement floor. Occasionally I manage to scoot my crate here and there away from its ideal location. Sometimes my Kong or bone get stuck under the crate...it seems I can lift the crate with my head. I've started to get a little too cozy with some attachment on the furnace lately (so E says). But I should be getting a new tray any day now and I won't have access to external traction anymore. Hopefully, it'll still fit in the base of the crate, even though I have added some curvature to the typically straight line welded design of the wires. I'll do my best to not snack on this one, as long as E&A keep it latched in...

R