Molly is such an honest dog. What you see is what you get. She always tries to do what she thinks you want her to do and she follows directions beautifully. Ok-if food is involved and no one is looking she might not be so honest. But her younger brother Jack is another matter. He is always looking for the angles. When I got my first dog (Charlie), I started with him sleeping in a crate. He was trained with the use of a crate, but after two years I did away with the crate and Charlie slept either in our bed or on his own small dog bed. When we started going to dog shows, Charlie did not take kindly to the crate thing. He just did not see that he was a dog and thought that he belonged with us not locked away. He would bark for hours. Once on a trip to an agility trial in Ohio he barked for a solid 6 hours. I swore that I would never do away with the crates again. That being said; Jack came into our lives 13 months ago and he has always slept in his crate. The routine has been for me to let the dogs out, bring them back in, call them to their crates and give them a treat. All was well with Jack as long as the treat was special. Recently I tried using their regular food and suddenly Jack did not want to go into his crate. Last week I let the dogs out and when they came back in Jack headed straight for our bedroom. He went under the bed, to the very center of the king size bed. It was as if he knew exactly where to be to keep me from reaching him. So I went to bed and waited for him to hop up on the bed, then I carried him to his crate. The third night he out waited me. He waited until I was sound asleep before he came out from under the bed. See I am a slow learner. The fourth night I finally got smart enough to close the bedroom doors. Jack came in, ran straight to the bedroom door and then turned around and looked at me. But he won. I am now back to special treats for going to the crate. He is very smart and very cute and very manipulative. I will post a recent photo so you can see just how adorable he is.
