It's one hot mess, yeah I know this, but don't even try to remove the "nest". Oliver made this nest for Angel, yeah my 78 pound labradoodle really did this! And if we remove it he only brings in more stuff for the old one to sleep on, which at this point is fine because I don't have to worry about her trying to get up or down from the sofa and hurting herself in the process.

There's a part of me that'd like to believe that Oliver feels guilty for having destroyed Angels princess bed and this is why he keeps making nests for her, but we all know that's not the case.

We're still hand feeding her, and she's become quite picky with some days not eating at all. I've been blessed in that my neighbors help me out with her from time to time, like when I have to go places, and they have experience with an elderly dog whose time upon this earth is growing short.

She's been with us nine years today, yes I got her on my birthday nine years ago she was a rescue, its hard to believe as the time has passed and quickly, her actual age is somewhere around 15/16 years.

Winter is coming on here in central Iowa and at some point we're going to have to put a bed in his crate so he will stay warm during the night; we keep the house at 58F during the night.

He was being a pest earlier so I decided to perform a social experiment with him, lock him in his crate with a polar fleece blanket, to see what his reaction would be. He did good, he spent a few minutes rearranging the blanket and proceeded to go to sleep. This is good because I was concerned about him shredding his new dog bed that I'll be making for him; basic polar fleece with polyfill inside to give him a couple of inches between him and the metal floor of the crate.

In case your worried about his being isolated during the day while in his crate, don't I'm a full five feet away from his crate working on the computer plus he won't be in there for long, during the day he spends anywhere from five minutes to four hours in there all depending on what errands I have to run.

I just wanted to see what his reaction was to the blanket, it took Angel a good five years before she would tolerate anything in her crate other than her food bowl, we'd give her a blanket and in the morning find it outside of her crate and her sleeping on her back legs straight up in the air! Now she sleeps on a polar fleece dog bed I made for her, again with the legs straight up in the air.