A Pizza-Lovin’ Pup

The wife and I got a husky puppy shortly after we moved into our new townhome. Both of us had grown up with dogs in our lives and we both loved huskies, so we got a husky puppy.

Our particular puppy was born on October 9th. When we had an opportunity to pick him up, it happened to coincide with Thanksgiving weekend and we weren’t in town. The following weekend, we met up with the couple we got the puppy through and picked him up. It was now the start of December and he was almost two months old.

Over the next three or four weeks, we worked with him on crating and potty training. The twenty-fourth of December came along, and we had plans to go out to see the wife’s side of the family for Christmas Eve dinner.

We had picked up and used a baby gate to try and corral the puppy in the kitchen area of our home as it was the best place to keep him when we had to step out for a short while. We left some puppy pads for if he had to go to the bathroom and his crate, food, and water so he’d be comfortable. 

To our surprise, we learned that he’d figured out how to climb the baby gate and get out into the living room where he’d do his own thing. We got a second baby gate and staggered one above the other by a few inches to keep him from climbing them. It worked (for the time being). So, we set up the two baby gates, put his crate in the kitchen, and left for the evening to head to the Christmas gathering.

Upon returning home about six hours later, we walked into the kitchen and saw that the door on the crate was closed. We opened the door and the puppy was not inside the crate. Where was he?

I could hear whining from the living room. I took down the baby gates and there he was, sitting on the floor in the living room, whining because he could hear us, but he didn’t see us.

Here’s what had transpired:

He had pushed the door closed on his crate, and he climbed the door to the top of his crate. The top of the crate sat about six to eight inches from the countertop in the kitchen. He climbed on top of the counter and went over the breakfast bar to the ground below on the other side.

Some of you may be thinking that he probably scaled the baby gates, but we know he didn’t because we had left a piece of unfinished pepperoni pizza from our late lunch on the counter, and when we returned, it was gone.

Our husky was an escape artist and a pizza lover from that day forward. He did eventually learn to climb both baby gates, and he learned how to let himself out of his crate if he was determined enough, but this wasn’t until he was at least a year old and fully grown. He would take his front paws, grab the door on his crate, and simply pull back on the door, causing it to bend until the locking mechanism broke. The door would now be so warped that it would just fall off and he’d let himself out.

Fast forward twelve years later. He still loved pizza. He had glaucoma and couldn’t see anymore and his hips were bad, but he still finagled pizza when we weren’t looking. His last pizza heist was after we purchased some take-and-bake pizza. I tossed the baking trays in the garbage and pulled the trash bag out and set it on the floor to take out to the garbage bin in the garage. I got sidetracked and had to go upstairs to get something. I came back downstairs a few minutes later and my old, blind, and slow-moving husky had navigated to the garbage bag, removed the baking trays, dragged them to the living room floor, and was going to town on the stuck-on pizza dough, cheese, and pepperoni. I was so impressed by the fact that he did this in his current status that I let him have the win.