Oh Casey.....

We've given the babies a little more freedom of late.  While Poly continues urinating on the couch, she still has the freedom of spending the night on the furniture.  Casey does as well, but he doesn't chew or use the house as a toilet, etc.  He just doesn't make bad choices.  Or at least he didn't.  He had been escaping his kennel which is what prompted the "more freedom" movement in our house.  Casey had escaped enough times and since we didn't see how he got out, we didn't want him to hurt himself on the way out.  He has a breakaway collar, but he could still get scratched/cut.  It just didn't seem safe and we didn't want to put him in danger.

We have a baby gate on the steps to the upstairs.  It keeps the dogs from going up and there is a cat door, should they decide to come down.  Poly and one of the kitties have touched noses a few times, but mostly Poly gets freaked out, barking and running around the house.  When both dogs are outside, I have recently felt or heard a kitty in the kitchen while I'm watching the dogs Poly to make sure she takes care of business and doesn't beg to come in and wind up going in the house.  The gate has served its purpose for years now, no problem...... Until - earlier this week, Casey figured out how to get the baby gate open.  This dog is too smart for his own good!

It's a teensy bit hard to explain but I'll give it a shot.  The gate's lock in on top.  There is a red part that slides left, unlocking the a handle-type thing which lifts up so the door will open.  Now, we didn't use the "unlocking" part because it just makes it more difficult on us and the handle part had been enough to keep all of the kids in their own spaces (with a random kitty sighting on the dog floor).  One night we saw Casey - upstairs, trying to get on the bed!  Upstairs!  There was a lot of banging and he broke through 3 times (I think).  Each time he had opened the gate and after the first time we slid that red part over to further lock thing up.  That means that he is brilliant and figured out a way to slide the red thing over and pull the lever up to open the gate.  We're pretty sure that he just wanted to be with us and was going to get to us one way or another.  We can hear him sometimes jumping onto the gate to get to us - as is evidenced by the missing paint where the gate meets the wall.

It was probably 3 days ago that we added a new layer of security.  When hubby and I are away from the house, we keep the red thing over the lever and have now begun using a bungee cord to lock the door in place.  That worked.  Until today...  Hubby was in the shower and heard a lot of banging.  When he got out of the shower he found Casey, upstairs and the bungee cord was still in place.  Who knows how this guy made it upstairs, but he did.  We have to figure out something new.  We definitely have a Houdini on our hands.

It's coming up on Easter and we have jelly beans in the house.  We leave Casey free during the day and when we go out, Poly goes into her kennel.  Keith and I both went out last evening.  Keith arrived home before me and found that he had broken into a bag of jelly beans I had hidden in a basket which I had covered with a med box and my datebook and a few other things.  Well, Casey and his super nose found them.  He got the bag open and ate a bunch; we're not sure how many.  He did spit some out, though - the black ones.  I mean, who likes black jelly beans?  There must be a market for them because they make entire bags of just the black ones, but to add them into the fruit-flavored mix?  Well that's just wrong.  Casey knows that and Keith found them laying on the ground with the rest of the opened bag.

Oh Casey.....