Reha a.k.a Houdini

  (March 2012)As most of you know (and certainly anyone that follows my blogs or Facebook account) Ian and I acquired a puppy around the same time that we went to closing on our house. She is a natural (uncropped and undocked) Doberman. Typical markings, black top, brown belly and cheeks HUGE paws. Having a 6 yr old Rat Terrior and a 6 yr old Ash Tabby cat since they were 6 months and 8 months respectively I figured there would obviously be some adjustment to adding in a 9 week old puppy. I knew she was going to be a big girl, and throw in a couple toddlers and you have one crazy household.
   I can handle that right? I mean how much trouble can a puppy be.. She is just an adorable loveable puppy with puppy breathe and no housetraining. A few hours of name debating, meeting the pup and introducing her to the other animals and the kids and TA-DA we have a puppy. . . Welcome to our crazy house Reha.

  


 (Fast Forward to September 2012) Reha is now a 50 lb (and still growing) baby. Oh, how the kids and Ian (ok secretly I do too) adore her. She is great with the kids, I have trained her to stay with me, so for the most part she is wherever I am. She is well housetrained... unless it's raining, and save a bit of jumping out of excitement for visitors, is well mannered. We have nipped the chewing things that don't belong to her, and the begging for the most part. This is a hard one when you have children at her mouth level with an over abundance of food always at her disposal. If told no, however she is pretty good at containing herself. She loves to play and gets a bit rambunctious and we have to calm her down. She is, like I said, a big girl and full of energy. She knows that the childrens stuffed elephants are all off limits and if we tell her to get down off the furniture she listens- not happily, but she does it. She will stay if told and sits on command,along with the other basic commands and occassionally dances in the living room with me.
   She also suffers from seperation anxiety. If you have ever experienced a child who is a perfect angel until their parents walk out of the room then you have a pretty good idea of what I am about to tell you. Since we have not crated Cookie when leaving since she was about 9 months old we figured we would start without and use it if absolutely neccessary. For the first few months we would notice her using the bathroom in the house sometimes when we left, the random chewed McDonalds toy. (If you have listened to any of my rantings about needing to learn to get rid of things and my fear of being a hoarder you should know that the random mising toy would not be missed among my children and her punishment was more about the principle than the toy)
  One day I came home to find that my new couch cushions had been partially eaten. The covers for them were in the wash and she sought comfort in my being gone by eating the corner off one of them. FAN.. TAS.. TIC... Are you kidding me?!?!? I immediately closed the door and allowed myself some time to recover. Proceeded to the dryer to remove the cushions and calmly stuffed all the shreds into the cushion cover to make sure that there was not a missing chunk out of the corner.Bumpy but manageable for the back corner. Over the following week I discovered more and more of these suprises, including 2 chewed laptop chargers and cell phone chargers, a chewed power cord to a meat smoker that someone left at my house for several months and a missing chink of carpet in front of my bedroom door. Ian and I decided that it was time for a crate.
  You would think that we were torturing this poor dog. She howled and cried, she barked and clawed at it. she jumped around in it trying to break free. Apparently the entire length of any of my outings these annoying and loud attempts at freedom continued. Eventually she discovered that jumping at the right place for long enough would get the locks to slowly move over and she would be able to roam freely around my house.
  Welcome to my bad mannered dog. The first time that I returned to a dog running freely in my house that I KNEW had been caged there was dirty diapers torn open all around my house, dog urine and feces tracked through the entire upstairs, half eaten pads and tampons on my bed and in the hallway.. some used some brand new... a broken bowl, a devoured plate of cookies and my curtains had a hole in them. This was the day before JT's birthday party. So add to the fact that I have 50 people expected at my house the next day and my husband had been at work all week only one night getting home before 10 pm, and now I have to not only clean up this disgusting mess, but steam clean my carpets, go to the grocery store, decorate, shop for a present and finish making 15 more capes for the kids.

  Can we say MELT DOWN?

   Over the next few weeks there were occassions like the one above every day. We would try something new and it would work for a day, 2 if we were lucky and then she had escaped. We went to the beach and the 2 friends I had coming to look after them were having the same luck. We figured out a way to block the door from her opening it and she figured out how to unhinge the top piece even faster. We weighed down the top piece and she figured out how to shake it off and climb out. we zip tied the door on and the top piece on and she popped a side open enough to climb through. And then I got call while out at an expo from the neighbor.
   Reha was being entertained at the house 2 doors down because they found her roaming the neighborhood. She had escaped a cage that had 16 heavy duty zip ties and a bar across the front, she had devoured all the bad meat from the trashcan that Ian forgot to take out, pooped in my hallway, peed all down the stairs, not even saving me just 1 step. chewed another cushion, eaten half a bag of powdered sugar, generously spreading the other half of the previously unopened bag in her cage. She had chewed through the power cord of my rice cooker and eaten the box holding my great grandmothers silverware that I inhereted. It took me a while to figure out how she had actually gotten ahold of it, and then I realized that the bar on the cage door was still there, adn since the cage opens out and was pushed against a wall with a shelf blocking it from opening more than 6 inches, she had broken through the top and climbed over the wire shelving we use as a pantry, knocking the silverware down in the process and breaking 3 of her nails.
   She then continued to jump at the front door long enough to knock the deadbolt loose and has mastered opening up the door by pulling the handle down and then using her nose to nudge it open. Once open she then uses a paw to push the handle forward to open the glass door and uses that paw to swing the door out, holding it open for herself as she hops right out the door. Intelligent and a PAIN IN MY REAR!
   When I stopped to pick the pain in the rear -about to be dead- dog up from the neighbors I was met with the following greating. . "You know your dog is in heat right?" 


   Well Hell. . . No... No I did not, but thanks for brightening my day.

   Figuring the cage was not worth the trouble when she could outsmart it anyways I decided to be brave. I scrubbed my house. finally finding a place for everything I have downstairs and getting anything she could possible find tempting out of harms way and let her be.
   She actually did fairly well with it, but she did manage to greet me in the driveway 2 days in a row.
 
 
 
 
   We have since gotten a plastic cage from the neighbor across the street who has the largest German Shepard I have ever seen in my life. Reha has thus far been unable to figure out an escape method, though she has diligently tried. I have researched anxiety in dogs and have attempted to work with her many different way to no avail. I am briefly finding solitude in (at least temporarily) outsmarting her, and gratitude to the most awesome neighbor anyone could ask for.