Tinny vs. TCU: Round 1

Tinny – 1, TCU – 0

As mentioned in the last post, Tinny had made short work of our first pass at the TCU, and we had decided to “beef up” the security. Since Ryan was sick, off I went to The Home Depot to pick up some galvanized poultry netting (aka: chicken wire), and a package of yard stakes.

I was sad to think of taking Ryan’s beautiful creation and “rednecking” it (I’m pretty sure that’s an actual verb) with chicken wire but… necessity demanded. Ryan came out to help but he was in no shape to be working so he measured out and cut the pieces and I used a staple gun to attach the netting around the interior of the TCU fence.

Maybe I shouldn’t have let Tinny watch the operation. She kept coming over to me while I was hunched down stapling. She would rustle my hair around with her nose like… “Mom, I could save you some time and effort by telling you this will NEVER hold me.  Just sayin’.” You may notice the mischievous look she’s giving the camera behind my back.

We allowed several inches of the netting to hang off the bottom of the fence and we used the yard stakes to secure it to the ground.  The goal was to simultaneously prevent her from accessing the fence with her mouth to chew it, and prevent her from digging by having the wire on the ground below.  In theory, this was a great solution.

It was 6 p.m. the night before our trip so we put Tinny in immediately to give it another test run.  It took her less than 5 minutes to pull most of the wire off the gate, and dig up the wire that was staked into the ground below the gate, and be gnawing on the wooden fence again.

I was ready to admit defeat at this point, at least temporarily. Since we had to leave at 7 a.m. we weren’t able to make kennel arrangements, so I called our dog sitter for help with weekend options. We use ZooMommy in Farragut and Nicole immediately stepped up and offered to either pick Tinny up and take her to a kennel in the morning for us, or to keep Tinny in her own home for the weekend (she must not be reading The Tinny Chronicles).

With that option in our back pocket, we decided to give the TCU one more shot for the night.

Next up: Tinny vs. TCU, Round 2 : March Badness