Pupdate

No doubt, by now, you may have seen the glorious dog shaming website. This site allows you to take pictures of your naughty dogs and try to shame them into submission. It never actually works, but it allows pet owners to laugh and commiserate.  If you haven't, check it out, STAT: http://dog-shaming.com/

A few nights ago I was reading the website for, admittedly, way longer than I should've been (Just one more page... No, really, Just one more page now... I mean it this time, this is the last page!...), when I started thinking-- I should totally submit my dogs to this thing! I mean, the dogs accepted by the website eat underwear, steal food from babies and fart, while mine can open the door, knock on the neighbors' doors, get neighbors' kids to come outside to play/give treats and destroy an entire bedroom's worth of carpet all in one day-- I win! I hope they accept me!

And then I kept thinking... oh my god. I have my own web page! I'll accept me! I do what I want!

And then I realized I hadn't posted anything for a long time and that it was finally time for a PUPDATE! Drumrolllllll please....

After the carpet was destroyed by our dogs in an effort to escape our apartment, we knew we needed a new plan, so we started by doing some internet research. The internets assured us that the only way a dog could open a lever handle was by jumping up, pulling down on the lever, and pulling back. Surely, this was how our dogs were escaping! So, we did this:

No way you're escaping now, you naughty dogs!

The wire shown above is attached from the edge of the handle to the screw towards the top of the handle mount, making it impossible to pull down on the handle and in essence, locking our dogs in the apartment. That evening, as we were at dinner with some old friends, at the very moment of explaining our newly "fixed" door, proudly basking in the glow of our genius, and raising our glasses in a toast for finally outsmarting our dogs, Mr. Kate's phone rang.  

It was our neighbor. The dogs just knocked on her door, she said. They apparently decided they wanted to play with her children. Don't worry about a thing, she said. They were rolling around on her living room floor right now and having a blast. After we regained our composure and rediscovered our humility, we put our wine glasses down, finished our meals and rushed home.  

 24 hours, a trip to Target and multiple apologies to neighbors later, we had a NEW plan. 

That's right, 3 different locking measures. We kept the original wire that prohibited the handle from being pulled down. Then we tied a peice of rope to the handle that was just longer than the distance to the floor. At the end of the rope we put an empty medicine bottle. Now, every time we leave the apartment, we pull the bottle out of the apartment, under the door, preventing the handle from being pushed up. For good measure, we added an additional device around the handle itself that provides extra resistance if the dogs manage to get through the first two locks (which we decided they inevitably would).

While the dogs didn't get out the next few nights, the final test of the door locks occurred during the visit of our very dear friends, Celina and Gavin. 

After a fun-filled weekend at the beach, our friends took a cab to the airport very, very early Sunday morning. To be nice, they engaged all the locks so the dogs wouldn't get out while we slept. Unfortunately, engaging all the locks also meant that we couldn't get out. Sure enough, we woke to find that we had been imprisoned alongside our dogs, who looked at us with ironic amusement as we spent the next 20 minutes clumsily removing the doorknob to make our own escape.

We had become the hapless victims of our own creativity, but we knew, in that moment, that we had finally won.