Making a Break For It

I would like to introduce you to my kids, Cooper and Derby.

Cooper is the grey dog in the red life-jacket, Derby is the brown dog in the green life-jacket.  This is them on our boat.  Oh yeah, they hate the water.  They can swim, but hate the water (the life-jackets make it easier to drag them back in the boat).  I could tell you tons of funny stories about them on the boat, but today's story is not about the boat.

Every day for two weeks now, we leave the dogs in our hotel room and go to work at our office a mile away.  We check on them several times a day, and even take them up to the office occasionally.  They have been doing pretty good with this arrangement.

Have I mentioned that Cooper has serious separation anxiety?  He has gone to some pretty crazy lengths to be with us (jumping through windows, breaking off metal kennel doors, I will elaborate more another day).

Well today I left them in the hotel in the morning and they did just fine.  My husband and I came back to the hotel for lunch and let the dogs out for a while.  We then put them back in the hotel room and went back to work.  Not five minutes after we got to the office, we got a phone call from the hotel.  Our dogs were running through the halls of the hotel!  WHAT!!!  Cooper had figured out how to open the door and let himself and Derby out.  Luckily, my husband's uncle was at the hotel and went up and got them and put them in his room with him.

I knew this day was coming.  Cooper has done this before.  He watches what we do and how things work, and then repeats them when we are not around.  When we lived in Shreveport we went to the pool at our apartment complex and left Cooper in the apartment.  A little while later I saw him frantically running around the fence of the pool looking for us, and our apartment door was wide open.  He had figured out how to spin the deadbolt and then open the door.  I though it was a fluke, and left him again, and not five minutes later he was out again.  At that apartment we had bite marks in the door lock because Cooper knew he had to do something with the lock first to open the door.  He is too smart for his own good.

Now we will have to find a new way to keep them contained.  Any ideas?

One more cute picture of my babies (don't ask me what they are doing).