Today we came home from work to a living room which looked like we had been burgled

Somehow and for some reason, Buddy (we know it was him after some detective work) took on the ironing board and made it through the sliding door and into the room. This was after my mum had been down and the dogs had had an hour in the garden.

We prop the ironing board up against the sliding door as both dogs are terrified of it it is usually stood up against the wall near their bed and it once tumbled over - it didnt hit either of them but made a massive bang and scared the living daylights out of them, since then they both run a mile whenever we get it out! so, after they worked out how to get the latch off, and the baby gate broke, we now use it as a deterrent to keep them from pushing the bottom of the sliding door and getting into the room while we are out, and it has worked - up to now

Buddy was in the room when Phil got home - the ironing board layed on the floor and Bella being a very good girl and still in the kitchen all the cushions were off the sofa and on the floor, every one of our vertical blinds were ragged off and the curtains pulled down, even the curtain poles had been dragged from the wall and were on hanging down!!!

It took us an hour to clean up - the sofa needed cleaning as it was covered in paw prints and so was the window sill, the windows needed cleaning as they were covered in Buddy spit and paw prints, all the blinds which had been ripped up needed picking up, the curtains and poles needed putting back up and we had to hoover up all the bits of concrete from the walls

We asked our next door neighbours and Gary said that he saw Buddy on our window sill this afternoon. He said he was crying and whining for ages and really loudly, thats why he came to look cs he thought we must have got a new puppy due to all the noise! This means he has managed to get in the room, the door has slid back closed behind him and Bella has stayed in the kitchen and he couldnt get back into her, so he went a bit crazy.... talk about seperation anxiety!

Time for Mr Hamshaw to use one of his many new un used tools he has collected over the years - the just in case ones, and put a couple of extra catches on the door, much cheaper than keep rectifying this amount of damage

Maybe Karlie can give ya some pointers on how to tackle this one as she is working through it with Honey Bunny.

I put the curtain poles up when we first moved into our house (surprise surprise!) and I'm not a DIY expert so thats probably why they came down so easily

The only sort of catch we can put on the sliding door is the hook and eye kind because of the way the door is, we did that when we first got Buddy and Archie and believe it or not they worked out how to get the catch open and got into the room!

So then we put the baby gate on which lasted a while but then broke, and we didn't replace it straight away because to be honest, neither dog has even tried to get in the room for ages and the ironing board did the trick anyway. I think we will invest in another baby gate, that will be the easiest thing to do to avoid this. Everything has been put back together except my vertical blinds

I think the other problem was that he must have got in there as soon as my mum left and being apart from Bella for a few hours will really have done his head in I want to know what possessed him to take on the ironing board in the first place, he's such a wuss that it amazes us as to where he found the courage to move it - they are both so frightened of it