Life Without Bars

When we brought Oreo home, he didn't want to go into his crate.  He spent nearly two months locked in a crate in the animal shelter.  The first night we put him in the crate, he tried to break out.  For the first few nights, I would wake up at night from the noise he made trying to get out.
Eventually he settled into his crate.  He dutifully went in every night right after his last bathroom break outside.  He would walk right in the door and into the crate.  When the weather was bad, we'd find him huddled in the crate. 
Lately he has been spending more time in the girls' room after they go to sleep.  He'd stay up there on the rug next to their bunkbed long after they went to sleep.  It's almost as if he thought he'd get to stay there if he was quiet.  Every night we'd call him downstairs and he's sleep in the crate.
Everything changed Thanksgiving week.  Oreo was sick.  The kind of icky dog sick that resulted in lots of messy clean-ups.  One night I awoke to hear him howling in the middle of the night.  He'd never done this before, so I came downstairs.  He was huddled in the corner with a mess in his crate.  I took him outside, cleaned-up the crate and went back to bed.  He slept at the top of the stairs while his crate dried and his blanket was washed.  The next night he went back in the crate.
A couple of nights later I heard him howling again.  I went downstairs to see him trying not to step in the mess.  I took him outside and cleaned the crate again.  He ran upstairs and slept at the top of the stairs.  When I crawled back into bed I told my husband that I just hoped Oreo didn't get sick on the carpet before we woke up.
He didn't get sick on the carpet.  He did run downstairs and get sick in the foyer, a place he'd been sick previously that week.  Since I had seen it enough during the day, I'm pretty sure he was sitting next to the front door when he got sick.  It was his standard place to say, "Um, hey.  Get me outside now!"
The rest of the week he'd run to the corner at the top of the stairs when it was bedtime.  Eventually we decided to let him spend the night there.  We discussed it a lot.  Even though everyone told us we'd eventually be able to get rid of the crate, we were skeptical.  We weren't sure what he would do outside the crate all night.
We also knew that once he was out of the crate, he wouldn't go back.
Turns out he positions himself at the top of the stairs and he stays there until the girls come down in the morning.  Even when Tom wakes up and rushes out the door at 5:30 a.m., Oreo stays put.  He's not going anywhere until the girls wake up.
I have to admit I don't miss having the big metal crate in the living room.  It's in the basement, though, just in case we need it again.