Tuesday, October 19, 2004

Chapter 3 - Confinement

And so we learned – Riggs was not easily contained.
Since we really had no doors on the first floor with which to contain our new puppy (doncha just love an ‘open’ floor plan) we decided to invest in a crate. Crate training is supposed to be very good for a dog. They say they actually grow to love their crates as their dens. Julia is crate trained and that works very well. So off to Wal-Mart I go.

Hmmm, what size, what size. Based on the size of Riggs mother, and that the dog is only supposed to be able to comfortably turn around, I select one of the larger medium sized crates, (yes, I am sure you know where this is going) and for $29.95 I am outta there.

Riggs was adjusting nicely, and she and Julia started to play together.

The crate was working out pretty well (except we had to have it in our room at night to keep her from bouncing it all over the house looking for us).
But, as you may have guessed, it wasn’t long before we couldn’t stuff her into the crate anymore.

Luckily we are able to borrow a larger crate.

We put her favorite Batman comforter in there and she seemed happy enough.
As you can see we lined it with some rubber flooring material because she would dig so hard at the metal bars to get out – we thought this would protect her. HA.

Shortly thereafter, we gave up on the idea of a crate altogether.


She was happy, which of course made us happy. But this still left us with the problem of not being able to confine her.

We decided we needed a door.
So we bought an interior French door (we needed a door with some glass) from Home Depot for $125.00 and some hinges and a doorknob for another $25.00 bucks.
I hung it myself.
It’s a little crooked.
But it keeps the dog in the mudroom.

There, problem solved. Dog contained for only $180.00.

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