Working out the kinks

This week Andrew had a business trip to downtown Denver. Yep, Denver. His regional meeting just happened to be in Denver this time, so he still stayed at the hotel with his colleagues just like if the meeting was in Phoenix or Vegas. So it was just me and the boys and the dogs for 2 nights. Days when the hubby is gone are always a little more tiring, but he travels more with this job, so it is becoming almost second nature as I do it more often. However, add a dog that is still adjusting to our family from time spent in a shelter and a rescue organization, and by Wednesday night, I was at my wit's end. Literally, I felt like I could see the end of my wit.

Wednesday morning I woke up to a big steaming pile of dog poop at the bottom of the steps, which as it turns out, was a perfect metaphor for much of the rest of my day. It was a day of just lots of little things, kids screaming, fighting, cranky, dogs not cooperating, etc. I was having thoughts of "why did I want 2 dogs again?" But before I went to bed I read a lot of info online about helping shelter dogs adjust to a new home and was feeling a lot better. I think Cedar will work out long-term, just some kinks to keep working out. Most of the time when we are home, Cedar is just like this and perfectly awesome.

However, we do have to leave the house sometimes, and Cedar hates going in his crate. But until he's reliably housebroken and trustworthy, he definitely does not get the run of the house. So I got the great idea of using the awesome dog run that came with the house. We even picked up this cool dog house from craiglist (love, love, love craigslist!). When I got home though, Cedar was laying right next to the backdoor, gate to the dog run still locked, no holes to be found...my guess is that the punk jumps out. So not only is he running around the yard doing things like digging and eating wood chips and branches (yes, he likes the taste of wood and it's lovely regurgitated), he's locked himself out of the area we're trying to train him to use as his bathroom. So the dog run is out for now and we're back to forcing him in the crate.

I love the info on crate training that says to NEVER, EVER force your dog to go into the crate. If we did that, our dog would NEVER, EVER go into the crate.

We tried the crate in the kitchen, thinking that he could get used to it on his own. We threw treats in the back. The only problem is Aspen, who has no fear of the crate. As soon as Cedar nears the crate, she runs up, boxes him out, marches in and eats the treat. So the crate is back in the garage, which is working beautifully for now, but it took us some trial and error this week.

Thursday night we tried the crate in the kitchen. That night Max woke up at 3AM crying that he couldn't find Anty. Anty is the stuffed anteater (such a cuddly animal, that anteater) that he sleeps with. So I crankily went through all the blankets on his bed until we found Anty.

Cedar of course heard us and thought that IT! IS! TIME! TO! GET! UP! and the crate tail-thumping and yipping began. Andrew got Cedar settled down and I laid in bed for about an hour, still hearing an occasional weird noise. I tried to ignore the weird noises and go back to sleep, but I kept thinking that maybe Andrew forgot to lock the door when he let Cedar out and some weirdo was stealing my children and I would never forgive myself if I woke up in the morning and they were gone because I was too lazy to check on them.

Totally rational line of thinking, I know.

Finally, I went to check on the kids. I let myself peek at the clock, 4AM. Normally I don't let myself look at the clock because then I start calculating the hours of sleep I'm not getting and just get more worked up. Anyways, I went to check on the kids and Max was still wide awake. (Aha, weird noises = 4 year old playing in bedroom.) He was "so excited for Halloween!" he couldn't sleep. That and since we're almost to the end of daylight savings, it's been dark in the morning when we get up, so in his mind, it very well might have been about 7AM instead of 4AM. I convinced him that he needed to go back to bed and finally, finally got a little bit of sleep.