William Snesrud of CrossDove Writers
Recently I have written about the new adventure for the wife and I, despite being in our early to mid-60’s.
The new adventure is raising a new Maltese puppy who we brought home at 11-weeks old and as of two days ago turned four-months old. At this point the most obvious concern is the continued work on that go do his stuff outside duty, at least until a week ago.
Not yet even jumping onto any furniture, we left our precious Frosty in a four-sided, 30-inch high pen we have when we left to do some shopping. When we came home about 40-minutes later, much to my surprise we were met at the door by an excited Frosty, joyous that we were home.
At first, I questioned myself on whether I did remember to put him in the pen. I then asked our grandson, who entered the house first, if he had grabbed the dog out of the pen – forgetting that he had yet to pick up or barely even interact with Frosty.
So, while we festered for several days about just how he got out, we did discover within 24-hours of the incident that Frosty could now jump onto certain pieces of furniture like the hide-a-bed couch and old recliner. Great!! A new dilemma to deal with, do we let him on the furniture or not, or maybe only if someone is sitting on that piece of furniture at the time.
Several days after the first incident, plus at least one more of the same apparent jail breaking from the so-called safety of the white pen, we needed to run a couple of errands, so we plotted a plan to catch Frosty in the act while we were gone.
As we were leaving the house, I set up my smart phone on a short, desktop style tripod with the function set for camera and then put Frosty in the pen. With the phone in place pointing directly at the pen, I hit the film button on the phone and headed for the door.
While running our couple of errands all the wife and I could talk about or concentrate on was whether or not Frosty was going to make another grand escape from the pen. We soon learned the answer was yes while also finding out the time frame in which he made his great escape – it was a shocking moment for both of us.
As soon as we arrived back to the house and gave our greetings to a very, happy you are home, Frosty, I went straight for the phone to check and see what we would find. And the finding had two huge surprises for both of us.
Surprise number one was the how that Frosty made his escape with. By jumping several times until he was able to catch his front paws on the top of the pen while catching a cross bar halfway up with both of his back paws, Frosty then pulled himself up like a professional athlete until one of his back paws could reach the top of the pen, at which point he then vaulted himself up, over and out of the pen in a movement that would make any animal athlete owner proud. In slow motion it was a movement of pride for this owner, despite the fact that I was also not happy because now we had a new problem with what to do with Frosty when and if we left the house for an extended few hours.
The biggest surprise though came with surprise number two – the time in which he did the ‘art of escaping’ duty.
Fifty-one seconds!! Yes, just 51-seconds is all it took from the time I pushed the button on the phone while heading for the door, and the time Frosty was up the side of the pen and vaulting to his freedom of roaming the house without oversight until we came back through the front door.
If I broke it down farther, it was more like 40-seconds from the time you could hear the shutting of the front door and the time he vaulted to freedom. Just 40-seconds!!
Needless to say, we have since taken a few steps to hopefully remedy our two situations, and just in time for our longest stretch of time with leaving him home alone.
Number one – in order to work with this potty-training stuff, we purchased one of those ‘tinkle turf’ things and set it in our main bathroom. Using previous poo and pee smells, we are hoping he will figure this one out when he may have to do his thing inside.
Number two – we finally gave in and ordered a crate (or kennel as I call it) that has a secure door to keep Frosty within a space while we are gone. He has already checked it out as we temporarily put an old blanket in the bottom of it and left the door open. Sometime before we leave late this afternoon, we will go purchase some kind of a soft mat to go on the bottom of the crate to make it more comfortable. We figure that and a few toys, plus maybe a small bowl of water and Frosty should be good while we are gone for up to five hours.
My biggest fear is how will I hold up knowing I have basically caged him up, so we could enjoy an evening dinner with some of our kids and grandkids. Guess only time will tell, and that will be yet another story of our adventures with Frosty in some upcoming Grumpy Gramps.
With that – hugs & happy thoughts from Grumpy Gramps
(Copyright@2018, CrossDove Writer – no part of this may be printed, copied or used without written permission by CrossDove Writers and Grumpy Gramps.)
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