Gida is the proud new owner of this baby-blue crate. Under the pee pad (sad face), there is a comfy chocolate-brown pillow.

Yeah, so, sad face. She has peed and pooped enough times in the house during our workday that this became our most viable solution at, um, containing things. So far, it’s going alright.

She had a soft-shell pet carrier similar to these, but no everyday crate. This is unusual, I guess. Well, when she was younger, she had a crate. My hubs picked her up after vacation to find she’d have nothing to do with it — Gida henceforth did not use crates, and we and our Gida-watchers learned an important lesson: do not force them into these things. We’ve enticed her with treats and she seems to have a decent sense of ownership over it. Our worry, though, is that she’s too old to learn this particular new-dog trick. That she’ll pee and poop all over it, and she’ll therefore hate hanging out in this baby-blue toilet.

Or is that old-dog/new-trick thing just baloney? I mean, we could get her some curtains and a disco ball if you think it’ll help, but…

So far, my tricks for teaching this particularly particular lady:

• TREATS in the cage. Treats from the outside into the cage. Treats + crate = good time. Repeat.
• Don’t make noise. Any noise. I sighed a little when she stopped halfway on the way in, and she reacted slightly to even that. Tsk tsk, me.
• The b-o-n-e in there with her really seems to help, as well as a little rawhide chew. I was only half-kidding about the disco ball, because it has to be as dorm-room, this-is-mine as it can get.

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