Dressed Up Dog Crate

As you saw in this post, I decided to make Sweet Olive a crate cover to help this wiry, jail-like contraption look a little more homey. The idea of dogs sleeping in crates has never sounded very nice to me, but Olive genuinely loves hers and voluntarily goes in it each night when it's time for bed. We leave the door open and sometimes she takes a lap or two around the bedroom, but mainly she snoozes in there until we wake up in the morning.

I found some DIY crate covers which I pinned to my Pooch-themed board  to give me a jumping off point.

With Harley's crate cover, I liked that it was a neutral color and had some detail on the top.

What I liked with the blue and white one was that it came around onto the front of the crate and sort of framed the door.

Before I could make a cover, though, we had to get a crate. Because we were putting it in a corner, we needed one that had a "garage door" style opening, rather than a swinging door since there was nowhere for the door to swing. We found the right size on Amazon for $37, which was nearly half the price we would have paid at PetSmart. 

Olive's foster mom suggested putting a towel or a yoga mat under the crate to help protect our carpet from the wires. I went with a yoga mat since it's waterproof (not to mention my yoga stint was short lived, so this guy was sitting around unused), to be an extra layer of protection in case of any future accidents (we haven't had any yet... knock on wood we never do). I trimmed the sides so there wouldn't be tons of excess lime green sticking out, but I opted to leave it nice and long to protect the wall--again, in case of any upset doggy tummies. You can never be too careful, and my dad has a story that's too horrifying to share with you that confirms that walls sometimes need to be protected.

To figure out how much fabric I would need, I measured each of the 4 sides of the crate I would be covering and sketched them onto an index card, adding about 1" to each measurement to allow for hemming. Once I got to Joann's and found the fabric I was going to use, I sketched all of the pieces together like a puzzle, making sure to fit them within the width of the fabric. I find that it's best to wait to do this until after you've found your fabric of choice, since they come in different widths. Granted, there are only a few standard widths, but this progression is just what's easiest for me.

First thing's first: wash the fabric, and make sure to hem the edges first so it doesn't become an unraveled ball of string in the washer. This first step is one that I always struggle with... because I'm impatient like that... and impatience often wins. Not this time though, because the last thing I wanted was to sew this crate cover, wash it a few months later, and have it shrink by an inch and no longer fit.

Please excuse the crazy white balance/general laziness exhibited in these pictures. Taking quality pictures required more energy than I had that day :)

Rather than cutting panels for each side of the crate (which would have meant hemming each of the four sides twice), I figured it would be easier to drape the whole piece of fabric over the crate and pin the edges to create a seam, then turn it right-side-out to hide the seams.

I chose a fabric that would more or less blend in will the walls, and it nearly perfectly matches our
bedsheets. It's clear that I intentionally didn't make the bed,
just so you could see the comparison... right?

After everything was lined up, I started pinning.

After I had four edges pinned, I thought it would be best to go ahead and get them sewn so I could see if any adjustments needed to be made before I got too far in. Also, pins make me somewhat nervous and I had no idea how to navigate sewing around this many of them, much less any more of them.

Here we are with those four edges sewn, plus a few more. You'll notice in the picture below that there's a slit going down the right side, which was to create a sort of panel that I could roll up like a window so that Sweet Olive could see us sitting in bed while she was in her crate. I wanted to do this because when we first adopted her, she became very nervous when she couldn't see where we were. Luckily, she grew out of this insecurity a few days after I made this cover.

I say luckily for two reasons. The first being that growing out of insecurities is a good thing. The second, well... can you see it? Have you spotted what I did wrong?

Womp womp. I put the slit on the right side of the crate, which is where it needs to be when the crate cover is complete. I failed to think about the fact that when I turned the cover right-side-out, the "window" would switch over to the left side, giving her a lovely view of... the wall.

It was not until I had done all of the work to create this lovely little window for her that I realized my error. John received some very angry texts about how I had spent hours and hours making Olive a cover and it was ruined! RUINED!!!!!

I decided to finish everything up anyway (even thought it was RUINED!!!!!), and ended up using a zig-zag stitch to secure the window panel to the sides. To add some detail, I tried to mimic the first inspiration picture I showed you by adding some ruffles. I'm not usually one for ruffles (they feel too girly to me), but I liked that they softened the cover and kept it from being just a giant cube of fabric. I had no real technique to adding them... I just bunched the fabric up and sewed it down. 

And, voila! The ruffles came out much more... ruffly... than I had expected (they feel sort of domineering and messy to me), but I was too defeated from the whole window panel failure to do anything about it. Looking back, I think I spaced the ruffles too close together and should have made each one about twice as wide.

For the record, the dark spot in the back left corner is the tag for that sheet.

Above, you can see the yoga mat lining the back of the crate. The cover also encloses the back, but I put the yoga mat between the crate and the cover so that the portion of the mat that sits on top of the crate would be hidden by the cover, rather than visible.

Now that we've lived with it for a few weeks, I don't miss the panel at all, and Olive seems quite happy in there. As for the ruffles, oh well. I've gotten used to them and think it would be too much work to rip all of those seams & re-attach them, just to make them slightly less in-yo-face.

So, what do you think? Have any of you made a crate cover before? How did yours turn out? Also, can this be the last time I ever use the word "crate"? We prefer to call it her bed, which seems less jail-like :)

Poochy Update

By now you probably know that we've adopted the cutest little dog. We named her Sweet Olive, and in case you missed the news, you can read about the (very long) adoption process here. We've had her now for just about two weeks, but it feels like forever--in the best kind of way.

As I mentioned in my previous post about her, people really scare her. It took her foster parents months to get her to trust them, and it took us many weeks. I guess the natural (but unexpected) progression would be for her to start warming up to people in just a matter of days, which is exactly what's happened, to our great surprise.

A few days after adopting her, we took her over to my mother-in-law's house where she met three new people and one new dog. We had spent tons of time telling them that she was fearful of people and that she would probably ignore them or shut down. Well lo and behold, she walked right up to my sister-in-law, gave her a sniff, and wagged her tail. That sort of interest took us weeks to get out of her! I must say that for a moment, I felt a little sad that John and I hadn't been able to elicit that sort of reaction when we first met her, but then I realized that that's probably her how foster parents felt about us. Sweet Olive warmed up to us much more quickly than she had to them, but not because it was personal. Just because every time she's able to see that people can be nice--she learns to trust them a little faster.

Since we got her two weeks ago, she has basically transformed into a "normal" dog--one that's not afraid of every little thing. One huge, huge moment was when she decided to start using the stairs. I could never get her to go down the stairs or even walk by them. My strategy was to put her half way up the stairs, which would force her to go one way or another. One morning totally out of the blue she decided she'd be brave and walk down by herself! As you watch the video below... please remember that she was fearful of everything, so don't judge me for my over-the-moon excitement.

Luckily, since we got her after her puppy years, we haven't had to worry about training her. We'll enroll her in some sort of program so she can learn things like sit and stay, but as far as house training and crate training, we haven't had to think about it at all. 

There were a few things we did to get the house ready for her. One of the first ones was to go out and get this little cart from Ikea so we had a place to put all of her things. We set it right by the back door which is the most convenient spot since that's the door we use when we go out on walks. The cart houses all things Sweet Olive, like her harness, leash, treats, toys, etc. 

I was pretty worried about her going up and down the stairs since they're so slick, so I installed a stair runner to help her get up and down safely. I'll tell you all about the installation process in a week or two (and boy was it a process).

When we first started having her over (before we officially adopted her), we tried to entice her to sit on the couch by putting a blanket up there because her foster mom told us she liked to burrow in them. The blanket tactic worked, but she never seemed to move it much, and she also never sat anywhere but in that same spot.

Rather than having a Longhorns blanket permanently sitting on our couch, I thought it would be good to come up with a solution that was a little less obvious (sorry, John). I got some thin denim fabric and made her a little mat, that way a lot of her shedding ends up in one easy to clean spot. It doesn't really match the couch, but it's much more subtle than light grey + burnt orange.

Another thing I did was to make her a crate cover. I wanted something that blended into the walls since it's not exactly something I want to show off, but I also wanted to make it have some personality. What I ended up with is not what I had originally planned... but I'll save that story (and a full run down on how I made it) for another post. The good news is that she has a cover, it's a good color, and it gets the job done.

I also made her this little bell that we hung on the back door that she can use to alert us if she needs to go outside. We haven't trained her to use it yet, and now that I've made it I'm realizing there's not much of a need to. We go on a few little walks each day, and then one long one at night, so she has plenty of opportunities to go to the bathroom throughout the day. Once it starts getting warmer, we want to try and teach her that the back yard is a place she can go and hang out in if she wants. Right now she seems to think it's just a holding pen while we make our way outside for a walk, rather than an outdoor area she can actually use. 

We also got her a dog bed and put it in under the desk in my office. Whenever we stand up to walk somewhere, she gets up and follows us. She always likes to be in whichever room we're in, so this bed allows her to have a padded place to snooze while I work during the day (like now--she's sitting in her bed snoring. Cutest. thing. ever.). And, in case you think she looks sad in the picture below--it's just because she doesn't like having her picture taken. She's totally camera shy, which I think is interesting... how would she know what's happening? I don't know, but it's a real thing.

It's really nice to wake up to this little dog every morning. She always puts her front paws on our bed and makes sweet little noises. Usually, she'll be holding her stuffed fox in her mouth. And when I say stuffed, what I really mean is un-stuffed. Her favorite thing to do is de-stuff things and then carry the "shell" around.

Morning kisses

She tends to hoard her toys and keep them all together. She also strongly prefers to have a pillow under her chin, which I think is adorable.

 

 Sometimes, she'll rub up on our couch and make herself all staticky.

"Mom..... what's haaaappening.......?!"

The very first time we left her we were worried she would be lonely/nervous/upset/not know what to do with herself, so we decided to Skype her so we could run back home if she started tearing things apart or howling non-stop. What did she do? She sat in the same spot and slept the whole time.

#goodpup

She has also gotten much better about riding in the car. If you remember, I gave John seat covers for his truck for Christmas, and one of the options was to add a built-in dog leash. This way, we can strap Sweet Olive in when we go for a ride. The leash is probably 2.5" long or so, which allows her to walk to the windows and to put her paws on the center console, but it would keep her from flying forward if we were to brake suddenly. Here she is in her old harness which to me, as I tell everyone (everywhere, all the time), makes her look like one of those dogs that's going to jump out of a helicopter into the ocean and rescue someone. Aside from being afraid of loud noises and people, I think she might be good at that ;)

One thing Sweet Olive loves is to play fetch. She's a great fetcher. She can catch it in the air, or if it's already on the ground she'll sprint over and get it. She's actually quite fast. She's also a genius (I mean come on, I have to be able to brag about her somewhere), and knows "drop it" so we can get it from her and throw it again. The funniest thing is that the moment we pick it up, she runs off and assumes you're going to throw it again, which is a very smart tactic because I never want to let her down. Here she is after a long round of fetching her squeaker ball.

This morning I had to take her to the vet which broke my heart. She had to get 5 shots and I felt soooo bad. This is her "I refuse to look at you for bringing me to this torture chamber" face. She actually handled it quite well, and didn't need any time for recovery when we got home. I expected her to go up to her crate and not come out for a while, but she just lounged around under the coffee table, which is one of her favorite spots.

So there you have it! John's on his way home which means it's almost time for our longest walk of the day. The three of us go all the way around the neighborhood and then come back for dinner. It's my favorite part of the day :)