The first night...

Lynn trying to show Wilson that crates are okay.

DAY 2
Last night was a challenge, which we knew it would be. When asked what day we'd like to bring our foster dog into our home, we specifically chose Friday because it's not a work night. If things go wrong on that first night and we have to work the next morning, it will not be fun.

Wilson had never been in a crate before. Apparently he had always slept on his previous owner's bed. That's fine and all but it proves to be a problem when the foster family wants all the dogs in their house to sleep in a crate at night.

Jolene loves her crate. She'll even go in her crate during the day just to sleep. (Which we never understood because why would you sleep in a crate when you can sleep on the ottoman or the couch or the big comfy chair downstairs? But I digress...) Going forward, we're hoping that Jolene can be an example to Wilson. Their crates are right across from each other so we're hoping that Wilson will see how content Jolene is in her's and he'll eventually be like "Oh. I guess this is what we do here."

Back to last night though.... Wilson didn't want to go in his crate. He put all of his body weight on his haunches in absolute resistance when we tried to push him in. The treats we threw in there didn't seem to help either as he gave us a look like "I ain't going in there to get those." So, my wife being the brilliant one in the relationship (and a first grade teacher where she has to get creative all the time) decided to show him that crates weren't scary. She climbed into his crate and sat down with a couple treats. He walked in -- reluctantly -- and sat down to eat them. All while Lynn was in the back of the crate with him. I closed the door on him and he didn't even notice.

Fast forward about 10 minutes and we let him out so we could all go back into the bonus room to watch TV (us) and chew on bones (them). After a while we went back into the bedroom so we could all retire for the night. Wilson still didn't want to go in his crate but did after seeing Jolene walk right into hers.

Here's where it gets rough.

We turn all the lights off and Wilson starts whining. Incessantly. We tell him to "hush" and "quiet" and "go ni-nights!" several times (not knowing the command his previous family gave him, if any). He wasn't having it. Eventually, after about 30 minutes, he gave up, stopped fighting, and went to the very back of his crate, curled up and went to sleep.

He woke up at 3:00am to go outside, and then again at 5:00am and then again at 7:00am. We knew it would be a rough night for him. We just hope he can adjust quickly to how we do things at our house because, let's face it, work starts again on Monday.

Wilson (left) and Jolene would like their morning treat please.