Husband and I had a long discussion (well, several), about the dogs yesterday evening. I acknowledge that they are rude heathen bitches.
Neither Macy or Dulce have a very good recall, and Dulce has a habit of taking off, making me stressed which makes the situation worse. Macy just ignores us. Maggie is very good about coming when called, most of the time, unless she is terrified.
Our priority right now is to come up with a dog containment system since we are going to have a stream of visitors, just like we did yesterday. Our biggest problem, is that the only entrance and exit to the house is through a gate, and it is very difficult to know if the dogs are loose in it, and harder still to keep them going through the gate.
They are going to have to accept being crated. Dulce is good at that, Maggie is the worst, and Macy is just a pain. Macy can’t stand to be kept away from me, especially in the next room. Putting her in Dulce’s extremely large condo worked well yesterday.
I currently have an exercise pen where the dogs can be put in the yard. It’s 4’ x 4’ and really doesn’t give 3 adult beagles much room, even if they are all less than 13” tall and 15 pounds.
We do have a utility room that has a dog door and goes out to an L shaped, very large dog run. We have been complaisant using it, and three panels of the dog run need to be replaced. Our pooper scoopers have been charged with that. When it is secure, we will be able to put the dogs in the utility room and they can have access to the outside. That was the original plan and worked well until we got Maggie.
Maggie is just insane. She screams and bellows at the top of her lungs when she isn’t happy. If the weather is bad, she leaves, and since we live on the corner of said busy street, we don’t want her to end up a flat dead dog. Our neighbors have retrieved her for us several times. She will have to be crated during most of the day during most of the process.
I think life will be better for everyone in the house when the house repair process is over. Just don’t know when or how that will happen.