#144. or, The Dog, The Door, and The Dummy

  If you're a burgler or criminal, you should probably disregard this next statement.

  We live in the country, and we rarely  lock our doors.

 I mean, when we go to bed, or into town, we will usually lock the door. But most likely, if you were to find the front door locked and were determined enough to walk all of the 50 steps or so it is around to the back of the house, you could probably get in through the back door. It's just the way we do things.

   Part of the reason we're able to do this is because we have dogs. Particularly  a big old  male yellow Lab named Tuke, whose bark is so deep and booming that it rattles your bones when he lets loose. He's not our only dog though, but we're a family with a strict 2 dog policy.

  That's why we have 4 dogs.

   3 Labs, and an "English as a second language" Corgi cross misfit. Who came to us, understanding only Russian, when she was a pup, from our German Mennonite neighbours, as a gift to our youngest son. What are you gonna do?

  We're actually pretty lucky to have just four dogs. Our male and female Labs recently had a litter of 10 pups and our 4th dog is the last of those pups. He's supposed to be our Middle Son's dog.

  Now, I'm not the Dog Whisperer or anything, but you would think, that in the world our dogs live in, the pup should be the lowest on the totem pole in order of hierarchy. The 2 big Labs are at the top, and our Russian/German Corgi comes in 3rd, when she isn't goose-stepping around the perimeter of our property in a leather trench coat, with perfect military precision. Which I'm convinced is what she does after we go to sleep at night. Although, she's pretty full of herself so I'm certain, in her mind, she believes she's number 1. The pup is at the bottom. Or, WAS at the bottom. It seems that he has found a way to leapfrog himself into a position of authority. Well, at least a solid 3rd, anyways.  He's discovered how to open the front door.

  Our front door has a keypad lock and a  handle with a thumb latch to open it, and our pup has discovered that he can reach up and pop the latch with his paw to open the front door. Which was sort of cute the first time he did it, but when it was -25 degrees Celsius and I thought it was odd that all 4 dogs were gone, only to find them in the house, lounging in the living room, with the front door wide open while I fed the cows, it wasn't quite so cute anymore. So now we have to lock our door, and more than once, I've looked out the window to find that pup trying to work his freaky door opening magic, while the big dogs wait patiently to get back inside.

  Because it's something that we never used to do, we sometimes forget to lock the door. That means, once in a while he gets lucky, so the pup keeps trying the handle whenever he's stricken to come inside. It can be a little unnerving to be in the middle of some suspenseful, stalker on the loose TV show, when all of the sudden, the front door handle starts to rattle. Or to be awakened in the middle of the night, by the clickety, click, clicking of the front door latch.

  But probably the worst thing about having the door always locked, is that at least 9 times out of 10, when I come to the door, I forget it's locked. Usually it's when I have an arm full of grocery bags, or I'll be absent mindedly flipping through the mail that I've just picked up, I'll reach for the door handle, and in  the split second that I remember the door's locked, it's too late for my body to stop moving forward and I end up a piled heap against the door with my face in the glass. Because I'm old. And my cat-like reflexes aren't what they used to be. And it would seem, I'm a slow learner.

  So our pup is about 4 months old, and if  1 human year is 7 dog years, that makes him just less than 2 human years old and he's already mastered the front door. On the other hand, I'm right on the doorstep of 45, and have yet to, in the last 2 weeks that we've had to start locking the door, been able to learn to stop walking into the side of our house. It seems, I've been out-adapted by a puppy.

  I figure at this rate, by June, he'll have gone through enough combinations on the keypad to have cracked the 4 digit door lock code and will be able to get in whenever he wants. Then I'm screwed, because I've lost the directions and don't know how to change the code anymore.

  ...........my only hope is that the dog's smart enough to learn how to close the door behind himself.

4 months old, mastered getting into the house, AND drinking from the toilet!