Tuesday, September 26, 2006

Bait in a Crate

Remember I told you the trainer lady Jane told Mom and Dad to crate me all day to stop me barking. Well, Mom and Dad have held off doing that because they know I like to have the freedom to move around. Besides, we never had a crate! But that changed when Gracie had the temerity to outgrow hers and get a new one. So guess who got the hand-me-down? Moi.

Mom's friend Christine, Mother of the famous Dean-O, instructed Mom on how to get me to like my crate.
"Give him rib bones in the crate, that way he'll associate the crate with delicious treats" (Well, that was the gist of the advice).
So off Mom went to the supermarket to buy me beef ribs. The crate was assembled in Mom's office and the experiment began.

I smelled the rib bone. I got excited. But I also smelled a rat when she threw the bone into the wiry crate! I am not dumb. I get my ass in there and I knew I'd be trapped. So I wasn't going in. Bone or no bone. Oh how Mom tried to coax me in. When she wasn't looking, I dashed in, grabbed the bone and ran downstairs with it. I hid it behind the TV, but Mom found it and brought it back to my crate.

Enter Dad. He told me to get to my crate to get my bone, and somehow coming from a fellow male, it made logical sense, and in I went.
And it wasn't so bad, the crate that is. And the rib was WONDERFUL!

Here I am eating it in my crate (note I am not wearing my orange harness. I killed it last night, I chewed the buckle off when Mom and Dad were not looking!):



So thanks to Christine and Dean-O for giving Mom this brilliant idea.
But I'm still a bit weary of that wire crate...den my little tushy - it's a cage doggone it!

AGC