Arlo, the Magnificent
Before we had the gate, we had to be especially careful about leaving Arlo home alone. For his safety, we would put him in his XXL kennel whenever we left the house. It was a massive kennel, and we thought it was about as secure as it could possibly be.
The last time we used it that way, we came home to something we still cannot explain.
Arlo was sitting outside his kennel.
The kennel door was still closed and locked with the padlock.
And not just closed—the padlock was still in place.
We had started using a padlock with a key after discovering that Arlo could wiggle the kennel enough to make the latches work their way loose. For safety, we would leave the key in the lock so we could get to him quickly in an emergency. So there was no mystery there: the door had not been opened.
But somehow, Arlo had escaped.
And the evidence inside the kennel only made the mystery stranger.
The harness he had been wearing when we put him inside was lying inside the kennel.
The rug that had been sitting in front of the kennel was also inside the kennel.
And Arlo—the dog who had supposedly been inside the kennel—was sitting outside of it, looking perfectly innocent.
There was a tiny bit of bending in the bars, but barely enough to notice. Certainly not enough to explain how a 65-pound Labradane had somehow squeezed his entire body through an opening that was never meant for a dog to fit through.
To this day, we have no idea how he did it.
Somehow, Arlo apparently managed to squeeze himself underneath the locked kennel door, get out of his harness in the process, and drag the rug into the kennel with him—all without opening the door.
We stood there staring at the evidence, trying to reconstruct what had happened, and honestly, we still can't.
Our best explanation is that Arlo simply decided the laws of physics did not apply to him.
We bought a cat gate to block him in the back room, his room, for when we are gone and put the kennel away. Obviously, the kennel was no match for Arlo, the Magnificent.