Blanche The Escaper
Our Smart Girl
I'm going to take a short little break here to talk about what's been going on with Blanche.
Since we first got her, I had the luxury of staying at home with her for most of the day. There was all kinds of housework, errands, and jobsearch stuff that I could do at home. For the most part, I left her alone for max 4 hour periods during the day. Sometimes a little longer, but she knew I'd be back.
Also, I would usually leave her in her little kennel. I'd come back, she'd awake from her nap and be ready to go out. Sometimes, weather permitting, I'd leave her in the back so that she could sun and such.
Well, in starting work, Mark and I have been thinking of / looking for alternatives. We tried leaving her in the back yard during good days. There were at least 2 successful attempts. The first one, 5 women from the neighborhood kept her from running into the major street we live off of and got her back into the yard. The second, she proably leaped the 6 foot fence to escape. That's right, our little whippet, something just over 1.5 feet tall lept the 6 foot fence.
We tried keeping her inside. Mark built and rebuilt a wooden pen that was 5x5x4 with a stick on linolium floor. I lost count on the number of times she figured out a new and innovative way to escape that pen. We'd come home, she'd greet us at the door all happy that we found our way home, and we'd survey the house and see how much damage she had wrought. Chewed blinds, blind pulls, broken plates and ceramic art pieces, bathroom spots, and an eaten box of crackers. Well ... the crackers were a little stale for us ... But she would torque walls so that the door popped out, knock doors out, chew through doors, beat on the roofing screen till it came up, etc etc. When Mark finally got a scenerio where she couldn't escape ... well, it was a bit of a mess when we found it.
What's the latest? Well you know those fancy metal kennel cages? She figured out how to break one of them.
Deep sigh.
