Hi, Karen,
You might try a brass snap to keep the cage closed when he is not
supervised. I would keep him confined to a specifica area as others
have suggested, but I would also consider feeding him twice a day and
stuffing his first meal into hollow kong toys from which he had to work
most of the day to extract it. It's fun, keeps him busy and happy and
if he gets through the meal too quickly, you can actually freeze the
kong toys stuffed with food to make it a bit more challenging. Once he
gets the idea you can hide the toys and make it hide and seek in the
confined area, hang them so that he has to get them down and all manner
of constructive challenges and puzzles to solve. Sounds like he would
make a very good obedience dog eventually!
We have a youngster like this one; he is smart as a whip and is
supervised whenever he is out; if I had to leave him in our dog room for
a long time unattended, I'd make sure he was VERY busy. <G> He never
ceases to amaze me as he is very inventive about the mischief into which
he gets!!
He has a huge cage crate with a cot in it and when we go out we give him
kongs, satellite kong toys, etc. filled with biscuit. I do make sure he
gets outside frequently for exercise; this does help!
I find that some chewers stop chewing at about age two when their teeth
fully set.
good luck!
Suze
Larry and Karen Emerson wrote:
>
> Well, I suppose I will go out tonight and purchase a Varikennel in the hopes
> that it will keep the FinnMonster in his cage.
>
> We had cut him some slack, as he had been being good as gold in the house
> while we were at work. We gave him free run of it while we were out on
> short jaunts, and then worked him up to longer periods of time out. Finally
> he got the whole house, all day to himself [and his cat buddies].
>
> Well, the stinker truly abused that priviledge. He was good for a solid
> week. Friday when I came in he had eaten a big hole in my winter hat
> [shredded it everywhere] and had destroyed a throw rug.
>
> I thought, perhaps he had a bad day, let him run the house on Monday...
>
> Came home to a 2 inch novel shredded, another rug shredded, teddies from my
> teddy bear collection all over the house [he had to climb/jump to get
> those], the edge of a plastic ice scraper chewed off, and my couch pillows
> everywhere.
>
> SO...
>
> needless to say, back into the cage he went. Few of you may remember that
> he can break out of his cage, quite easily. It is no fluke, he knows
> perfectly well how to do it with paws and nose. To keep this from
> happening, I closed the latch and took wire garbage bag ties to hold the
> latch down. Well, here we go...the Finnmonster chewed through the wire
> ties, and was free in the house to ruin the new rug I bought to replace the
> shredded one, and my teddies again.
>
> Bad to the bone right now. Is it seperation anxiety, [he is 11 months old,
> is it an age - maturity - thing?],the love of destruction, or paybacks for
> leaving him???
>
> Tonight he gets a new cage, or a system to latch the exsisting one that is
> inpenetrable!
>
> Good thing he is cute, cuddly and 90% of the time adorable. So, I am off to
> clean the confetti [from the book] off the carpet and hope someone can clue
> me in on this behaviour!
>
> By the way, this dog has tons of chews, toys and playthings available at all
> times...
>
> Karen and Finn 'the destructor'
>
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--
Suze at Llawen Cavaliers
"...I have seen that in any great undertaking it is not enough for a man
to depend simply upon himself." -Isna Ia-wica
"Thought comes before speech" Luther Standing Bear
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