It’s a week before Christmas, and I’ve turned the blog over to Baxter. In the meantime, I’m still working on the house behind the scenes and will have lots more DIY for you in the new year.

As a southern gentleman, I pride myself on being quiet and calm. However, every afternoon, I am overcome by my inner party animal. I blame the Boxer side of my personality.

Matt walks in the door, and I just have to pick up my kong and play it like a trumpet.

It shows Matt how happy I am that he’s home and how wonderful he is and how much I love him. But it’s not at all dignified.

As I come back into myself, sometimes I end up in a no-dog’s-land where I’m not sure who I am or what I’m doing. It’s a very confusing place. I end up sitting there with the kong and no idea how to get rid of it.

Seriously y’all, it’s hard to be a distinguished gentleman when I’m sitting there with a rubber cone hanging out of my mouth.

Any advice for helping me to control my excitement? Or any suggestions of tunes I should learn to play? What song do you think Matt would really appreciate?

Given that it’s the week before Christmas, I’ve decided to take it easy and have turned the blog over to Baxter. In the meantime, I’m working on the house behind the scenes and will have lots more DIY for you in the new year.

Matt and Julia make fun of me a lot for how much I love my bed. I don’t see why. They have “the most comfortable couch in the world.” I have the most comfortable bed in the world. But they won’t even call it a bed. All the time, they call it my “boat.”

I guess technically, with the ring around the outside it kinda looks like a dingy. Boat, bed — who cares? What’s most important is the boat is very cozy, and I can do all kinds of snuggles.

I can lounge on the deck with my sleeping bag.

If I feel like there’s bad weather coming, I can hunker down in the hull–of course with a paw out in case I need to paddle.

Sometimes I like to pretend it’s wavy and roll around (although it’s always embarrassing when they catch me kicking off my covers).

Since the boat docked at the farm, I haven’t even sat in Matt’s chair. Now, I just sail around the house, floating and dozing.

It’s a captain’s life for me.

For those that have been following along, the obvious question after last week’s post about Baxter’s baking attempt is why was the dog in the house instead of the dog run? Wasn’t your plan to let him stay outside when you’re not home?

Well, that was the plan, but you may have heard the saying about the best laid plans…

The dog run was not a hit.

We started slowly in the summer, trying to have Baxter spend just a few minutes in the run.

The first time he didn’t even make it a minute. It turned out the gap between the gate and the fence was big enough, and our dog is strong enough that he could push his way out.

I adjusted the hinge, tightened up the screws and closed the gap.

It didn’t work. Bax braced his shoulders and still pushed his way out.

Plan B was a second latch at the bottom of the gate. The result of that was a tunnel.

Look at the happy dog, free at last.

Plan C was a mesh base that Matt and his Dad wired to the fencing along the perimeter of the run.

I buried the mesh in dirt and then covered it all with a layer of wood chips. The result of that was more excavation and another demonstration of Baxter’s strength–this time in his teeth. Look at how he tore the mesh.

Moving on now to plan D. I added patio slabs over the mesh in front of the gate where Baxter most liked to dig.

This worked for a little while and we managed to make it up to about 3 hours in the run at a time.

But as we headed into the fall, neither of Matt nor I was really comfortable leaving Baxter alone in the run all day when we weren’t there. He loves being outside, sniffing all of the smells and watching all of the birds and animals, but he hated the run. We weren’t confident that he’d still be in there when we came home at the end of the day, and, most importantly, we didn’t want to stress him out all day.

We tried leaving him alone in the house, and he seemed to do okay, so we decided to go with that plan.

We did revisit the run on the Day of the Skunk. I’d given him a bath and kept him on his long leash outside all morning, but I had to come up with a better solution when I couldn’t put off going in to work any longer. I chose the run. I took the long leash and snapped it onto the fence just in case, gave him his kong full of kibble and a big dish of water, latched the gate and drove away.

I came home to definitive evidence that the run was a big fat #fail. The mesh was completely torn, the fencing was bent, the rocks that I’d used to fill previous holes were exposed and a new tunnel was dug.

Because of the long leash, the dog was still in the run, but we decided it was for the last time.

Now, Baxter is completely an indoor dog. He spends most of his time snuggled in his bed.

Although he does occasionally take advantage of being home alone to bend the rules.

What do you mean dogs aren’t allowed on the furniture? Matt gets the couch. You have your chair. This one’s mine.

We haven’t tried a crate, and our fingers are crossed that Baxter continues to do okay on his own in the house. If his baking urges return, we do have a separate mudroom where he could spend the day.

Does anyone else have an escape artist dog?