Dog wins a battle of wits

For the past few months, my wife and I have engaged in a battle of wits with a dog, and the dog has been winning.

It started nearly a year ago when my father-in-law was ill, and my wife and I were spending as much time as possible with him. Because he was 200 miles away, that meant frequent weekend trips, leaving our sweet, never-any-trouble dog behind in the care of a dog-sitter. At some point during those months of weekends and longer away from home, our lovable dog decided she no longer wanted to be housebroken. I discovered that fact one morning as I walked barefoot across our living room rug and found it soaked with dog urine. A little investigation found that the hallway rug also was wet. These just happened to be the two best and most expensive rugs in the house.

We parried this attack by deciding we would have to confine her and keep her away from the living room, after we had diligently and repeatedly cleaned and freshened the rug. We closed doors leading the the living room and bought an extra-wide collapsible gate to close off the archway to between the foyer and the living room. Our mixed-breed rescued dog had been with us for seven years, and she was having none of it. She managed to tear down the gate, even when it was backed by other obstacles, make her way across the room to the rug and soak it again.

So we confined her on our side entry/laundry room area, using two gates. She took them both down and went wherever she darned well pleased. I told my wife that her problem was more than just a little canine incontinence or house-training amnesia; she's deliberately punishing us. Don't be silly, my wife said. Dogs don't think like that!

Oh yeah? When our one-time sweet dog got free, jumped on the sunroom sleeper sofa, shredded the cushion with her claws and went into the living room, jumped up on the couch and left a neat, straight line of urine along the length of the couch. There was no doubt: Little Bear was mad at us, and she was getting her revenge.

Although cruelty to animals crossed my mind more than once, we decided to try to find a way to keep her in the house. We got out the dog crate that we had tried to get her interested in when we adopted her as a 2-year-old. We put her in the crate and closed the metal door. When I came home to check on her, dog drool and blood had soaked the lip of the crate door as she had tried to chew her way through the mesh metal door. We decided to try closing her inside our bathroom. We figured there was nothing she could harm in the ceramic-tiled room, but I found out different when I came home. In her determination to get out, Little Bear had nearly taken the bathroom door off its hinges. The bottom hinge pin was taken out, and the door was off kilter, hanging by its top hinges and thoroughly scratched and chewed for about 3 feet up the wooden, paneled door. This was done by a 42-pound dog!

We concluded that we could not confine her in the house. We'd have to convert her to an outdoor dog for any time we were away (she never misbehaved while we were at home). Thanks to her thick fur, she should be able to withstand the cold weather. It seemed to work at first as she frolicked in the brisk air, but when it rained, she fought her way underneath the deck and dug deep nests there. Every day when she came home, she'd be dirty. We bought a nice doghouse for her, but she refused to go into it, except to retrieve a tossed-in treat.

Still, we persevered. And then, one day I came home, and Little Bear was not in the yard. I called to her, and she didn't come, as she always had when she had hidden beneath the deck. I found the place where she had tunneled underneath the fence and closed it off with dirt, bricks and other barricades. I quickly learned that she was fully capable of moving solid bricks and other objects out of her way, and of finding other vulnerable spots beneath the fence. This went on for a few weeks, with the dog always outmaneuvering her human captors.

We decided to tether her on the deck. She wanted none of that. She not only chewed her best leash almost in two, she stretched the leashes far enough the wriggle beneath the deck and dig a nesting hole, all the while putting herself in danger of strangling. No more tethering. I decided to secure the fence by nailing chicken fencing to the bottom of the fence and extending it along the ground to make it difficult, if not impossible for her to tunnel out. Impossible, for this dog, is only a minor annoyance. She soon found places where she could nudge the metal fencing out of the way and tunnel right out, even if it meant covering herself in mud, losing her collar in the dirt at the bottom of the hole, and injuring herself to the point that she limped back home from wherever she wandered. My two days of labor were wasted, it seemed. We were ready to give up. We considered stringing an electric fence along the bottom of the wood fence or installing an underground fence with a shock collar but didn't really want to do either. Last try: I bought some cinder blocks to bury beneath the fence, anchored with 80 pounds of concrete mix. Surely, this will confine her, we thought, even if it costs almost as much as the original fence and takes a solid week of work.

A day after installing the first four concrete blocks, it was cold and rainy. We decided to leave Little Bear inside, with the living room closed off and the sunroom furniture covered with a tarp. Otherwise, she was free to roam the house, look out the windows, bark at passing walkers and delivery trucks, and sprawl on the floor to sleep. I came home to check on her, and everything was fine. We began leaving her for slightly longer periods. We took the tarp off the sleeper sofa. We found no damage, no soaked furniture. It was like we'd gotten our old dog back.

Now she lies beside me, seemingly as content as she ever had been. There's no doubt in my mind that she was angry with us and determined to get retribution, but now it seems that she's over it. We're still afraid to leave her behind with dog sitters. We'll have to find ways to take her with us on trips or put her in the kennel, hoping that doing so won't spark a relapse in her behavior.

This experience has emphasized to me that so-called "dumb animals" are not only smart and sensitive, they are emotional and occasionally vengeful. I only wish a dog could answer your repeated questions: "What's wrong?" "Why did you do that?" "Where have you been?"