Semi-freedom

As you all know, we have two big dogs. They'll both be 2 years old later this summer. We've crate trained them and while they stay out in the yard during the day, they sleep in their crates at night (and occasionally during the day if it's really rainy outside). We knew at some point they would not have to sleep in their crates anymore without fear they'd potty in the house...or eat something they shouldn't. I think we're coming to that point. On rare instances, we'll let them sleep in our room with us, and they do pretty well.

I wanted to try to start giving them a little more freedom at night, but I was nervous about letting them have complete free run of the whole house. But then I wanted to give them more roam than just one room. So we compromised. I put a baby gate at the top of the stairs, closed the doors to the guest room and hall bath, and let them roam between our room, the hall, and the office where their crates are. We've been trying that out this week and so far it's worked pretty well.

Cocoa was restless the first night and wandered around a lot, which kept waking me up, but Major still slept in his crate all night. The next night, Cocoa started out in her crate, and Major was in our bed...he just wanted to snuggle after a tiring day at the beach. By morning, both had made it to our bed. Last night, Major was in our bed most of the night and Cocoa was on the floor in our room. It helped that we moved some pillows in there for them and they slept on those off and on throughout the night. And silly Major, our door was open, but when he had to go potty at 3am the other night, he came, licked my face, and then went and sat in the open doorway. He knows to sit by the door to go out, so I guess he figured he'd still sit there, even though the door was open. He's so silly.

Anywho...so far it's working out pretty well. They mostly sleep the entire night anyway, so maybe in the future, we can open the stairs so they can go downstairs if they want (Major likes to sleep on the couch) and then we can close our door to keep them out. It's a little distracting when they jump on your face at 6am when you still have 30min. before the alarm goes off!!

So, yay for our puppies...finally growing up and becoming (just the slightest) more responsible. :o)