Foiling The Escape Artists

The whelping box has become a fortress.

Keeping eight busy, inquisitive puppies all in one place for any length of time is no easy feat. They've been finding ways to escape whatever space they've occupied ever since they've been two weeks old. That's when I discovered the first explorer on the carpet in the bedroom, not in the blue kiddie pool where he belonged.

Turns out that was just the first in a series of great escapes by one or another of this brother-sister team. And no matter how hard I've worked to fix each breach in security there's always at least one pup who finds an alternate way out.

After that first dive onto the carpet, I moved the puppies to the whelping box. It solved the problem until one Friday morning when I discovered six of them had squeezed through the space between the top and bottom doors of the box and were scrambling across the garage floor.

A quick fix with an old tabletop held in place by three ceramic planters solved that problem. But this is a determined bunch who always seems to be one paw ahead of me.
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Recently, I decided to expand the puppy space for my energetic crew. I opened the doors of the whelping box and put one end of the play yard fence against one side of the opening. Then I made a half circle with the rest of the fence, placing the remaining end at the other side of the box. While it created a bigger puppy playground, it also created new opportunities for escape. 

In an amazing display of teamwork, eight puppies bounding against the fence were enough to scoot it out, out and away from the end of the box. And that resulted in a just-right space for the puppies to run through. I answered that escape by placing paint cans against the outside of the fence. It stopped the moving fence and foiled their puppy power.

The fix didn't last. Several brave souls learned to climb over the edge of the box taking the two-foot drop to the garage floor in stride. That's why at 10 pm last night I was answering their call of the wild by adding some height to the sides of the box. I stood a collection of one-time shelves on end and placed my kitchen chairs side by side with their backs to the box.

It's not a pretty solution, but for the last 24 hours not one of the eight has figured it out. For now at least, I'm smarter than a puppy!