A near-disaster, and traveling

After my post about the foster bunnies, I had a bit of a scare the other day. The same day as the post, actually.

I came home talking to my aunt on my cell phone. I opened the door, and the alarm is going off. Over all this noise in my ears, I hear Howie's exciting whining - this is nothing new, he's normally excited for me to come home. I turn off the alarm, and his whining is louder. I open the door into the kitchen, and a happy pit bull is greeting me at the door.

I had locked him in his crate before I left for work that morning. I remember double-checking all latches (there are 4 because he has a crate with a side door in addition to the front door). Yet, here he was, so happy to have me home. I almost tip-toed through the house, "What did you destroy?" The house looked fine. All the pillows were on the couch, nothing was torn to shreds. "I don't see any poops..." Next, I had to walk into the guest room. I half expected bunny blood to be everywhere.

Howie is not aggressive, like I've mentioned. But he also wants to play with these bunnies so badly, and I am not exactly sure how strong his prey-drive is because I haven't seen this "in action." I do know that he gets far too rambunctious with dogs smaller than he is, and his eagerness to "play" with the rabbits tells me to never leave them alone together and to supervise him when the door to the guest bedroom is open.

So, I tip-toe into the guest bedroom, all the while talking to Howie and my Aunt is on the other end of the line. There was no blood. In fact, there was hardly a mess. Howie had tipped over Panda's cage, thus spilling her bedding, but other than that...nothing. Nothing was torn apart, everything was in his place.

This from the dog with such bad separation anxiety that he's destroyed the plastic venitian blinds in the kitchen (the window with the view to the driveway, next to the door we leave out of), who has shredded Very Important Paperwork from off the dining room table, and left couch pillows strewn about the living room.

I hung up with my Aunt, and got to cleaning the mess Howie had made. Then we headed over to my Aunt's house so we could ride with her to my mother's house for a visit. Which brings me to my next story.

Howie is a good traveling dog. He's not much of a fan of sticking his face out of the window for some air time, though he does like to stick his head out to look around when we're at a stop light. Usually, he's crashed out in the back seat, whichever side of the car has the most sun. In fact, during the whole 5-hour drive from Detroit to Pittsburgh in March, he was sleeping 5 minutes into our trip - we hadn't even left the city limits of Detroit, and he was snoring!

We rode with my Aunt to my parent's house, and she had laid the seats down flat in her Jeep Compass so that Howie had the WHOLE BACK to himself. He thought this was the bees knees! He hunkered right down and stretched out about as long as he could make himself. He did the same during the ride home. I love that I have a great traveling dog!