You know you make me breakoooouut

Quick. Name that song. Wait a minute...that's not difficult. Quick. Name that band.

Ah. Good times.

And we are having even more good times here in the Cook household. I haven't written much here about our beagle, Eddie, but he's been ours for a little more than a month now, and oh does he keep us on our toes. He has already been through a surgery (and is doing much better, thank you very much), has had two seizure-like episodes within eight days (but has now been, as far as we know, seizure free for almost three weeks), and has launched an attack on my mother-in-law's sweet, unsuspecting dog, Kira. He grabbed Kira's neck and would not let go, but he didn't break the skin. Which he absolutely could have done, so praise God for small blessings. When we adopted Eddie, he was our prime-of-his-life 2-3-year-old dog. When we left the vet's office a few weeks ago, he was suddenly our middle-aged 6-8-year-old dog. Did I mention he's kept us on our toes?

Beyond that, I'm trying to figure out how to leave the house without him. He does well in the car, thankfully, but he DOES NOT like to be confined in any way, shape, or form while inside the house. When Justin and I shut him up in our room to go for a run one day, he ruined the blinds on one window. He has broken out of his collapsable crate only to break the kitchen blinds, jump up on the kitchen counter, and knock over all the plants on our kitchen window sill. He cannot be contained by a baby gate, no matter how well secured. All this from the dog who is more often than not content to sleep all day on the couch. In all honesty, it would probably be best to leave him unconfined in the house. We've done it once or twice before, just long enough for a 20-min run, and he seems to keep calm under those circumstances. But I'd really rather not have to take that chance, you know? And, for the love of running on a regular basis, we simply must figure out how to be comfortable leaving him home alone.

Last Friday, I thought I had discovered the answer--zip ties. Because Eddie's crate is collapsable, he doesn't have to open the locked door to get out; he manages to knock out the whole front panel. So I wrapped zip ties around the crate where the front and top panels meet, went out for a 35-min run, and came home to a dog still securely confined in his crate. And it was glorious! But then...

Today I had to go see the dentist. But I was afraid it might be too cool to leave him in the car, so I left him in his zip tie fortified crate. When Justin came home for lunch an hour and a half later, he found Eddie loose in the house and his crate looking like this:

You probably can't tell, but it is (more or less) still intact. It is, however, turned on its side and rotated. The left "side" of the crate is really the bottom of it. See the blue rectangle? It says "Petmate" and is located on the still locked door of the crate. If you look really close, you can also see the (white) zip ties still doing their job.

So, just how did he breakout, you ask? (You ask if I haven't lost you by now, that is.) See the black tray on the floor with the bone on it? Well, that is a tray that rests in the bottom of the crate and slides in and out in case the dog has an accident the owner needs to clean up. On the front panel, underneath the crate's door, is where the tray slides out. If you look carefully at the picture again, you can see an open space that runs the length of the crate, and flopped against the "side" of the crate is the piece that hinges to either keep the tray in place or unhinges to allow you to slide the tray in or out. Apparently Eddie forced the tray out and then turned the crate so that the bottom was no longer against the floor. There was enough space between the bars on the bottom panel for him to wiggle through, apparently. Why doesn't the bottom of the crate have the same, more fortified pattern the rest of the crate has anyway?

Our dog is an escape artist. We should have named him Houdini. If anyone has any ideas for keeping escape artist dogs locked up, I'm obviously open to suggestions. Although, I have to admit...I am impressed with the little guy's tenacity.