dusty the destroyer: escape artist edition

A few weeks ago, Dusty mastered the art of opening my apartment door.  Consequently, this meant you could find him roaming around freely in the front yard area, meandering into unsuspecting neighbor's apartments on their lunch breaks and positioning himself under other patient neighbors' cars, uninterested in any amount of dog treats used in an attempt to coax him out (I have the nicest, sweetest, best neighbors on the planet).  After two jailbreak days, I got him to stay in the apartment by locking my screen door from the inside, which took some creative maneuvering (aka breaking into my own apartment) to get back into my house at the end of the day. While the problem of him exploring the great outdoors all day seemed to be solved, he still insisted on opening the wooden door to my apartment each morning after I left for work.  Any hopes of having a cool apartment went out the window, and while I live in a very safe area, the idea of having my apartment door open all day did not thrill me.

However, what it did do was prompt me to get down to business with obedience and crate training.  This weekend, I dusted off Dusty’s latest crate (in true Dusty form, he bent the first one be) and got to work devising how to fix it/lock it/jury rig it in such a way as to prevent the successful Houdini moves he's been known to perform.  Joe had the genius idea of placing locks in two places I hadn’t thought of before and we led Dusty into the crate for a test.  We put the crate in my bedroom and shut the bedroom door. If he managed to wrestle free from the crate, at least he would be contained to the bedroom.  I have a knob on my bedroom door, so his tricks with the door handle will not work on that door.  We left for a few hours and returned to find Dusty, worn out from break-out attempts, but still in the crate.  It’s been three days since our first successful crate time and he shows no signs of escaping yet.  Little victories!

Have you had any little victories (with pets or otherwise) recently?  I'd love to hear them!