War Puppy, Armed and Dangerous

It seems that a Border Collie puppy on the outskirts of Glasgow, Scotland didn’t get the message that those War Kittens are just a gimmick to sell credit cards or that the Border Collie war is one of words and deeds and not bullets.

Little “Charlie” (an apropos name for a budding guerrilla warrior) turned an aerosol can into an improvised explosive device and tried to burn his owner’s house down. Charlie climbed up the furniture to access a bookshelf to get to the can and punctured it with his teeth in front of the gas fireplace.

Attentive neighbors heard the explosion and rescued the puppy and the house before the fire got out of hand.

Perhaps Charlie is a home grown terrorist in training, perhaps he really hated the living room carpet (it clashed with the gunmetal blue couch), or perhaps he’s just a curious 11 week old Border Collie puppy who was left unattended “for a couple of hours.”

When you have a dog that is as smart as a five year old child, you really have to take the same precautions that you would for a toddler. While most people would consider a puppy baby sitter out of the question (why? My folks watch my dogs all the time) perhaps there’s no better example of why crate training is a must than Little Charlie setting the house on fire.

While it’s considered cruel and unusual to lock a toddler in a cage (call it a crib or a playpen and you’re ok), a puppy with a toy or a bone is just fine in a kennel for a good chunk of time as long as you’re smart enough to take them to the bathroom before you go and reward them for being good with some active play when you get home.

My dogs love their crates and often retreat to them on their own to put themselves to bed or for a quiet place to eat a bone away from the other dogs. It’s not cruel to crate train, it is cruel to give an unattended dog every opportunity to hurt or kill themselves simply because you’re not willing to take the effort to make a crate a positive experience.

Thanks to Poodle (and Dog) Blog for the heads up.

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