Ok, THIS TIME I got it.

The other day, I went out to Lowes, whose parking lot could easily be mistaken for an ICE holding facility based on the number of (presumed) illegal aliens hanging out there in the hope that some contractor will come by and hire them to do one of those jobs that an American would love to do.

While at Lowes, I bought a bunch of lattice to block off the raised area under my house that has proven to be a covered doggie expressway to freedom, at least as far as Belle is concerned.

I dug a trench the length of the house, screwed the lattice to the wall, then filled the trench in around the bottom and put gravel down atop that, thus making a nice, neat Belle-proof barrier that should easily keep her in the back yard.

Took me an hour or so after I got home, and looked damned goods, even if I do say so myself. And now I could but the dogs out and relax, safe in the knowledge that they'd stay in the freaking back yard.

It wasn't half an hour later that I heard something on the FRONT porch. It was Belle. She wanted to come in.

Looking at the gravel, it became clear that as soon as I left her to her own devices, she began methodically probing the new latticework, pushing on it and trying to dig under it every few feet along the length of it until she finally hit a weak spot where two of the sections came together. This she pushed in, and...

Dammit, dammit, dammit...

Now there's a new board screwed to the inside of the lattice where she did that, and it seems secure this time, but knowing Belle, she's got a phillips' head screwdriver stashed out there somepace and is just waiting for me to get complacent again.