Puppy containment -- Part 2

Back when we had our second CCI puppy, I remember desperately asking a highly experienced puppy raiser what she did to survive the trying early months.  As I recall, she replied that she couldn't live without an "x-pen." I ran out and bought one. 

"X" stands for "exercise." Ours has 8 folding panels, each two and a half feet tall and made of metal wire. We can clip the ends together to form an octagonal pen or arrange them to form other shapes (a 2x6-foot pen, a 4x4-foot square, etc.) 

Over the years, we've set our x-pen up on the patio and put various pups in it, mostly on sunny days, mostly for just a short time (until the puppy gets bored and cries to escape.) But with Dionne's arrival, I had a new idea. From the garage, I got a piece of heavy-duty plastic tarp.  I lay that on the carpet in my office, set the x-pen on top of it, and added a couple of toys. 

The first attempt

After just a few days of puppy attacks.

It seemed a brilliant solution. Dionne could occupy a big space right next to me, where she could snooze or play with her toys. She could see I was at her side, but she couldn't just roam around, to randomly pee on the carpet or chew my electric wires or rip up my artificial ficus or discover one of the many other possibilities for getting into trouble. 

What I didn't envision was that she would eat the plastic tarp. By yesterday she had chewed some great gaping holes in it, as well as making many small punctures. When she peed in the x-pan, the urine leaked through the punctures -- onto my rug.

So now Steve has had another idea that we hope will actually work. This afternoon, he went to Home Depot and bought two remaindered pieces of vinyl flooring.  They're pretty ugly. But we don't care.  We've set one up on the carpet next to the kitchen. The other is in my office, under the x-pan. 

Will Dionne be able to chew up linoleum?

Stay tuned.

Will this work?