May 6, 2009 7:07pm

Almost home.

Almost home for good.

Home.

I thought I was home for good a year ago when I left Buckhannon, WV and came back to NJ.

Unfortunately, I had to come back to WV for 8 more weeks.

Just 9 more days to go.

Roger and Socrates seem to be doing well at home. Socs has begun escaping from the kitchen. I should give some back story on this:

Go back a year ago to when we first got the Socs Man. He was an adorable 6 month old puppy living in a foster home with his two doggie sisters, doggie mama, a few other foster dogs, and the humans. He was very well kept and very well loved. He slept in a cage and was very comfortable with his cage. In fact, after getting bored with Roger and I he went back into his cage to take a nap while we were there.
The only thing going on there that was a problem was that he was allowed on the furniture- specifically the couch. I happen to think a dog can live a very happy and full life never being on my couch, but that's just me.

So Socrates gets to his new home with us. We have no problems crating him. His crate is always clean in the morning, and he sleeps through the night happily.

Fast forward a few months. Socrates starts crying at night. All night. All friggin night long. I also start coming home to Socrates greeting me at the door. Houdini has managed to escape from the cage. What he did was work the bottom lock with his nose and tongue, and then push the metal door open enough to slide out.

We thought we could trick him by turning the cage around and putting it against the wall. Trapped!

Not so much. It took him less than one day to figure out that if he ran inside the cage against the side of it, he could push the cage away from the wall using the momentum he built up (I don't think he actually knew the physics of this, but there was clearly a plan of some sort).

Then we decided to double latch the cage using the type of clips that are on leashes.

Perfect! He can't get out.

Only one problem. Now, I didn't actually see it all happen, but I saw the aftermath. He must have been having some sort of panic attack. I came home one day to find a cage pan filled with thick drool and a wall and floor streaked with blood. He still managed to escape and greet me at the door, but he scratched up his face in the process of bending the metal door open. He got the cage away from the wall, and the blood streaks were on the wall and on the floor, as well as drops through the house.

Okay. This is a problem. The poor thing was absolutely going ballistic. I had no idea why. So, Roger and I had to make some decisions.

The interesting thing is that despite the Soc Man's total meltdown while in the cage, he seemed to do nothing once he got out. Well, I won't say "nothing". What it seems he began doing is going into the front room of the house and sleeping on the couch. Nothing chewed. Nothing eaten. No walls torn down. Just sleeping on the couch.

A call to the dog trainer shed some light on the nighttime problem. She suggested just putting the cage in our bedroom and letting him sleep there.

This suggestion was amazing. We put it in our room, along with a fluffy bath mat on the floor of it (so we wouldn't hear his nails on the pan during the night). Every night since then we take him upstairs and he goes into his "room" almost without even being told. He sleeps in it all night and we don't hear so much as a whimper out of him. Amazing how something he was so anxious about could be his comfortable sleeping place as soon as we changed the environment.

But the daytime part was still a problem. We bought a pet gate and barricaded him into the kitchen. This seemed to work well. The gate was hardly even bolted up and he happly stayed in the kitchen while we were out. He had his blanket, his food, his water, and life was good.

Until 3 months ago. Now, he is escaping again. Not only is he escaping, but he is managing to escape when there are multiple obstacles (chairs) holding the gate up. He pushes it enough and out he goes. He always greets us at the door. The dog walker is trying his best to come up with new ideas to keep the dog in the kitchen, but nothing is working.

However, he still just sleeps on the couch. The same couch. Oddly enough, it is a couch that looks exactly like the couch he was on at his foster home. I don't know if there is any connection.

So now we have to decide what to do. We are protecting our couch with a blanket so that the hair and drool is not on our couch. He doesn't *do* anything else, though. He doesn't destroy anything. He doesn't make a mess anywhere.

I don't know why he keeps escaping. And my fear is that he's going to try to find a way to escape from the house next. My sister's dog chewed through a wall once in an attempt to get out. I don't want to come home to find a hole in the wall. Roger will find Socrates much less cute if our couch has no stuffing when he gets home.

We don't know what to do. It doesn't matter if we're gone for 10 minutes or 8 hours, Socrates still does this. We have a dog walker who comes twice each day, and Socrates always greets him at the door.

Poor Socs Man. I think he's lonely, but he's used to our schedule now. Getting another dog would require some breaking in time that we just don't have right now. My schedule is about to get wild when I start residency, and Roger's work/travel schedule doesn't allow for him to have a 9-5.

I think we're going to have to just accept that he has run of the house. That's fine if the worst he does is get on the couch, but I don't know what's next.