Hairy Houdini

So, the dog has now figured out the significance of keys.

A while ago, the dog figured out how to jab at the top latch of its crate, to flip it open.  Luckily, it didn't have the angle necessary from inside, to flip the bottom latch open.  But still, we'd come home to find the crate door weirdly askew, because the top latch would be hanging open, and the bottom latch would stay locked. Rather than allow the dog to bend its crate totally out of whack, necessitating the purchase of a new one, we decided to put a lock on the top latch.

And the dog watched, and waited.  Over the past few weeks, we've seen it sort of mouthing at the lock with its teeth.  Not biting down, but just sort of feeling around for where a pointy object (it was lightly trying its teeth) might slip in and somehow open it.  It has then invariably pulled back and gone into that cute "gears are turning inside my head" cocked head posture, as it figures things out for itself.

During all of this time, we've been putting the keys to the lock over on the windowsill (because we didn't want to be running around the house going, "Honey, where did you put the keys?  The dog needs to pee!", etc.*), on the other side of the crate.  Come home, grab the keys, unlock the crate, let the dog out.  Put the dog in, latch the gate, lock the latch, put the keys on the windowsill.  A behavioral pattern on our part, that could be followed, to be sure.  But by a dog?

Yes.  My wife came home today, to the keys lying on the bottom of the crate.  Don't worry, they were close enough to the side of the crate that she could reach in & fish them out, to unlock the crate and let the dog out successfully.  But this means two things, on the part of the dog:

One: The dog now recognizes not only that something needs to be put in the lock to open it, but now specifically what needs to be put in there.  Which I suppose is good, because my wife also presented the worry, "What if the dog had ingested the keys?!?".  Luckily, I find that unlikely, since it apparently recognizes their significance.

Two: The dog was able to jam some part of itself out from between the rather narrowly-spaced bars of the crate, to swipe the keys off the windowsill.  It didn't just frustratingly jab half a paw at them and get nowhere; it patiently, methodically angled its front leg (or whatever it was able to use) between the bars and held it there long enough, carefully enough, and exactly the right angle to brush the keys off the windowsill and plop them accurately into the crate.  Kind of like Angry Birds, for dogs.

Man, it's just a good thing the dog doesn't have opposable thumbs.  It's probably got a plan for that, too.

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*And yes, before you get all up in arms, we do recognize that the worth of a silly crate is immeasurably low next to the personal worth of our dog.  And we do have wire cutters that will cut the crate open, if it ever comes to not being able to open it otherwise.  And while we're at it, no we don't love putting our dog in a crate, even though the dog has known from puppyhood that the crate is and always will be its own personal safe place (would you deprive a child of its room?).  There are unavoidable times that we can't be there, when the dog also can't go to doggy daycare or whatnot, because of its ongoing ear thing.  So we're doing what we can, we do love our dog, and we do give it as much exercise and interaction as a couple of people working outside the home, can.  So please keep the hate mail to yourself, and rather consider how you'd handle it.  If you would handle it by not having a dog, good for you. But your life is not ours.