Dog of the House

Since I don't put Baxter in his crate anymore at night, I put him in my bedroom with me with the door closed. And though it makes him have extremely restless nights occasionally, it has always worked because I knew where he was the entire time and I knew that if he had to go to the bathroom, he would wake me up so I could take him out.

Last night, I was feeling daring though and a bit curious. Closing all of the doors to the other rooms, I left my door open for the night, meaning Baxter had run of my room, the living room and the kitchen. At first, it seemed to work fine, considering that he fell asleep on the floor at the foot of my bed. I fell into a deep sleep but then was woken up around 3 by a cold wet dog nose on my arm. And that's when I smelled it and it was not a pleasant aroma. Baxter woke me up to not only inform me that he had peed in the living room, he had also pooed by the front door. Oh well. So he's not ready to run around unsupervised. He spent the rest of the night in my bedroom with the door closed and him curled up in his dog bed.

This little experiment last night though did prove things. One - I must still put him in the crate when I go to work. And two - he has proven himself as a somewhat reliable guard dog. Every morning, the paper is delivered around 4 am or a bit later and every morning, Baxter hears the newspaper hit the door and begins to bark as ferociously as a 6 month old puppy can manage. At least I know that if anything ever happened and someone tried to break into my house (though I can't imagine why anyone would choose my house), Baxter would alert me so I could call the police and arm myself with the ax handle my dad left me - just in case.