Dog Question

[Elle]

You wanted a smart dog, you said. You liked having a smart dog. Now you have a dog who has spent only a month in the company of human beings, and prior to that was finding his own food and water to survive (the constant foraging/hunting behavior displayed outdoors is fascinating to watch, I grant you). He is not a dumb dog.

But here are some things smart dogs do:
They break all four of the locks on their crate, and so whenever you leave the house you find a previously-crated dog waiting for you. Surprising that the trail of destruction wrought in this process is not worse, but it does mean he will poop on your rug, finding himself unable to exit the house.

Smart dogs understand how to remove their collars when nobody is watching. There's also something about cattle dogs, that their necks appear to be thicker than any other point on their heads. So now he's in a harness. I can solve that for now. But I do not know what to do about breaking the locks on the crate. I have zip ties but I'm thinking if he can destroy a plastic frisbee or bone in short order, he can probably chew those off eventually. And the more zip ties that go on, the less you can extract him quickly if he does need to potty, or there's a tornado or fire or something. If you put on something like a twist tie, he will use his tongue to pull it in and remove it.

Anyway, have you ever had an escape artist, and then what?

Also, they say to exhaust the puppy, you know, give him lots of exercise! The upshot is that I am constantly exhausted, but the puppy is wondering where the other 10 miles of his cattle-driving run went, and therefore has 10 miles of energy left. I can have certain kids take him for walks at certain times, but the kids with the most free time on their hands are also the ones I trust least with Mr. Humans-are-strange here. He loves the kids but you never know what they will do at first, and certain strangers walking by will trigger defense-mode. Yet for some reason he has no problem with the people who ding my own alarm bell, like the dude working on the house down the block, who I have finally come to grasp is actively hitting on me and not simply fascinated by my inherently fascinating dog. According to my kid, "what a world" has become a "meme" now, so I say to you, "what a world". Ready for my nap. Where is it?

[Tahlvin]

Ah, you're at that time where you learn, "Damn, a puppy is much harder work than I remember!" Not that dissimilar from babies, where you forget after a year or two how much work they are, so you start to think maybe we should have another!

If you had a fenced in backyard, letting him loose in that area could help him work out some of that energy. But smart dogs have a tendency to start to dig underneath the fence. I'd suggest considering an invisible fence, but it sounds like he'd be able to get the collar off. Besides, if it's a longer-haired breed, sometimes the shock collar isn't able to get close enough to the skin to deliver a jolt that's noticeable enough to distract the dog from leaving the area. You could also try training the dog to fetch, which would at least allow you to let it get some exercise by running after the object while you stay in one place, but that takes time to train the animal well.

Barring some of those solutions, I unfortunately don't know of much else that can be done different than what you're already doing.

[Elle]

Yes, much like having another baby, without the nursing. THANKFULLY, because... teeth! I'm going to try those big black file clips on the crate and see if they trap him effectively. I am out of other options with the crate. This morning I tied it with metal clips in two places, and he managed to somehow pry the corner of the door open a few inches and squeeze his entire body through. Kind of like a mouse or cockroach or wolf spider flattens its body down to nothing in order to fit through the microspace between your door and its frame. I can only imagine that squeezing out of the crate must have been painful, but he succeeded. He is using one of the metal locking clips on the crate bottom to pry off his collar. So... it's all very challenging. But I have to be able to leave him in the house alone or else we shall have problems.

He is really good with chasing things in the yard - still 50/50 on the bringing them back, because sometimes he realizes he wants me to throw it again, and other times the desire to run around shaking the frisbee madly or attacking it viciously on the ground is too great. He usually brings the ball back, but the ball is less fun than the frisbee. He's going to be an amazing frisbee dog someday because he already knows he wants to catch it in his mouth, but it's hard! He has caught exactly two of them in midair so far, and his whole body trembled with joy. It was a thing to behold. He's a truly beautiful creature, and supersmart. It's amazing how much he has grown in just a short period with regular puppy foods. His favorite thing is to find a still-partially-moist worm on the sidewalk during our walks; I get the feeling that eating things like this is how he survived for a while. He digs in the yard for worms and bugs to eat, and makes a round of the plants with his tongue out, collecting up morning dew for his drinking water.

[Elle]

Dog will not go out and pee/poop despite overnight without potty-ing and demand to go outside at crack of dawn. Why am I awake, dog?

[Elle]

This dog is a freaking ninja. He's Houdini. There is no explanation for how he is getting out of this crate. I mean, I see how he must have done it, but HOW DID HE?