There's no place like...a 1'x2' plastic box

Sleeping on the kitchen floor would be about as long-term as most of my relationships. Nadine was committed to having my mom sleeping on the floor; not surprisingly, mom was not. A new solution was required. After discussions with a few dog-friendly family members and friends, a plan was hatched. As with most solutions to Nadie issues, another trip to PetSmarCoDepot was the result.

I had been anti-crate for Nadine, assuming (minus any verification) that her prior life in a puppy mill would predispose her to despising a crate or any enclosed space. I had not considered she might LIKE being enclosed because she had spent her entire life that way. Given her behavior with the travel carrier, we had no reason to believe she would accept anything else either. Yet, my mom soon noticed how Nadine gravitated to the blankets tucked away under the side table. Might this mean she wanted to be in a small space with a roof? Albeit one that didn't move when occupied?

The books say that dogs like a den; my friends often crated their pooches and assured me they voluntarily and happily lived in their crates. My immediate concern was that those pups had been crated from a young age...wait, Nadine had been crated from a young age too. Hmmm... might I be anthropomorphizing a bit too much here? Knowing me and animals, the answer was positively "yes."

(I'm the person those ASPCA commercials are designed for. You know the ones: Sarah McLachlan is singing about the arms of angels while images of shivering, one-eyed dogs and teeny, matted kitties flash on the screen. They have mastered the manipulative art of verklempting the viewer.)

While my flight to Madrid was canceled only a few hours before departure due to a one-day strike in Spain and I was frantically trying to rebook our flights and hotel, my mom was hitting up the PetSmarCoDepot for supplies. A crate was #1, with a baby gate pulling an Al Gore and coming in a close second. Unlike Al Gore's previous decade, the baby gate proved useless in the long run. Unlike George Bush's previous decade, the crate made life better for humans and dog.

The first night with the crate, my mom brought it into the bedroom to immediately start training Nadine with it. Since crates are like a dog's den, they will almost never have an accident inside unless they just can't help it. This was reassuring to the (beige) carpet and my parents. With a little coaxing and tasty treats, Nadine went into her crate. The door was closed for a while, then Nadine was let out and got a treat. They did this for a while, then closed the door for the night. The lights went out, and Nadine was out too. Snoring, no less. Like father, like daughter, like dog. She was perfectly fine in her crate...as long as her people were in the room too.

The baby gate was not nearly as successful. Nadine was living the life as my mom had a home office and only needed to leave for brief periods during the day. When my mom did go out, Nadie was kept in the half-bathroom to avoid her untrained bladder from letting loose anywhere and everywhere. Mom was still trying to puppy pad train her as well as bring her outside; the dual training methods were just spam to Nadine's inbox. Without giving her regular access to the outside while simultaneously preventing her from going inside by crating her while alone, she just kept going whenever she felt like it, on her puppy pads and off.

In hindsight it is quite obvious how we should have handled it, but neither my parents nor I had housebroken a dog before. Lesson learned.

The main problem with keeping Nadine in the bathroom was her schizophrenic scratching at the door. Being alone in the house was intolerable and she let my parents know this with claws on hardwood. The gate was viewed as a hopeful solution. Put up the gate in the doorway and she can't scratch. This may have been true, but the Little Houdini had other methods of escape.