Hello all!

I am new to this but I really need some advice as I am confused, annoyed and stressed all at the same time. My husky’s name is Toby and he is 7 months old . My husband and I got Toby at 9 weeks old, at first we wanted to crate train but we noticed that he was scared of the crate for whatever reason, so we decided that we wouldn’t do that. Now Toby, does not go potty in the house at all because we have a small backyard and keep the door open whenever we are home so he can go in and out whenever he wants. When he was a smaller puppy he would bite my furniture but he stopped that. My husband and I both work full-time jobs, I leave about 8am and he leaves at 9 but before he leaves he always walks Toby and because my husband works close he comes home for lunch at about 12:30-1pm to walk him again and then leaves to work until about 5pm, I don’t get home until about 7:30 . In the past few days (4 ) whenever my husband comes home from work at 5pm he has found cable wires, fan cords and even the AC cord chewed up and broken. I have no idea what’s going on with Toby. We take him to the dog park whenever possible but since I recently got a new shift (10-6:30) we don’t take him to the dog park as often as before. When I worked 8-4:30 We use to take him every day or every other day but now not as much, maybe once or twice a week.

If someone knows why this is happening, I would really love your insight.

Thanks!

Toby’s mommy!

Hi Jan (I'm assuming your name is Jan Desyrs - doesn't matter as long as you don't mind me calling you Jan)  Welcome to our bit of madness ...

I'm also going to assume that the lack of daily exercise he was getting has led to some boredom on his part (( A bored dog is a destructive dog! ))  Dogs are also very time aware (ask Sasha, if I'm not paying attention she'll tell me when it's 6:PM - supper time), a disruption to their pattern can have bad effects - like your change in schedule.

As I'm reading this, Toby is being left alone from 9-12:30 and then again from 1-5:00, neither extremely long.  

You don't want to hear it ("he was scared of the crate ... so we decided that we wouldn’t do that.") but crating him is going to be your best solution - especially since he escaped unscathed after chewing an AC cord which could easily have killed him!!

I'm not going to take long since there are books on the forum about how to crate train a dog.  The biggest mistake people make is to put the dog in the crate, shut the door and walk away -- and then they wonder why he hates the crate (I am *not* suggesting that's what you did, just one reason)

The short list looks something like this:

• Get a crate and set it up, leave it alone!
  
• After a day or so, toss a treat in it and walk away.  Repeat until he happily goes into the crate.
  
• Close (but don't latch) the door, treat if he's happy. Repeat until you can walk away with him in "set/stay."
  
• Close and latch the door, stay there with treats;
  
• Close him in the crate and walk out of sight, the next room for example.  Treat if he remains quiet.
  
• Increase the amount of time that you're out of sight until you can leave him while you're at work.
  

The crate is his home when you're not there, it's a SAFE home.  You can go to work and not worry that h'es gotten into something that could be fatal,

Thank you so much for your advise .. and yes Jan isperfectly fine . Thank God that nothing did happen to him when he bite off these cords as they were plugged in. Crate training was unsuccessful the first time and he actually went potty in it when we tried it . But I will def give it another try. Once again thanks for your advice. I really hope it works this time

Wow, you got lucky he didn't get zapped a good one. I had one dog that was a wire dog. Wire dogs are tough to break without the crate so hopefully you have better luck with it this time around. He's also hit an age where he needs more exercise and they start becoming buttheads in general. Those teen years/months are tough but you get through them.

TwisterII wrote:

Wow, you got lucky he didn't get zapped a good one. I had one dog that was a wire dog. Wire dogs are tough to break without the crate so hopefully you have better luck with it this time around. He's also hit an age where he needs more exercise and they start becoming buttheads in general. Those teen years/months are tough but you get through them.

I'm not sure what it is, but animals seem to be immune to electricity. lol
We had a cat when I was growing up that would strip wires better than any electrician. Not a single power cord or cable would be left unmolested. There would even be frayed wires from time to time where the cat went well past just the plastic coating.
Somehow it never got zapped.

We've had very recent experience with this. We adopted Misty at the beginning of September. 2 years old, never been housetrained, never been crate trained, never trained at ANYTHING except doing cute little tricks. It's been nearly two months, and she is now crate trained, leash trained, and housetrained. It took a lot of patience and was, yes, very stressful, but now she's a very goofy, lovable big ol' slob of a Husky that is much better behaved and has much better manners. Not perfect by any means, especially since she's still a very young dog, but OH so much better.

When we first got Misty we bought her a crate, and she'd obviously never seen one before -- She acted a little confused and skittish around it. We didn't want to shut her in it immediately, and we had to proceed very slowly and cautiously with her training because she's more than powerful enough to bust out of a crate if she wanted to -- and we certainly didn't want her to figure that out. We started by leaving it open in the house and occasionally throwing treats and toys into it to encourage her to go in it. In less than a week, she became very comfortable with wandering in and out of it and even lying down in it (we put a dog cushion with a waterproof cover in it).

It was a bit of a problem when we had to go to work/school. Leaving Misty outside without supervision wasn't an option because she can jump over our 6-foot fence. So, before we left the house, we did our best to wear out Misty every morning (a good walk and lots of Fetch in the backyard) and leave her in the house with plenty of toys, a Kong stuffed with dog treats, and a radio on -- and we left the crate open in the living room. All of that seemed to solve potential destructiveness with her because to date the only thing she's destroyed in the house is a pair of earbuds. (We allowed her access to all open areas of the house, but closed all of our bedroom and bathroom doors and moved as much as we could out of her reach before leaving.) However, she refused to be housetrained no matter what we tried, so we definitely had to get her used to being SHUT in the crate.

Once Misty was used to wandering in and out of the crate, we started shutting her in it for short periods at a time -- like whenever we had to run the vacuum cleaner or leave the house for just 15 minutes or so. We also made her sleep in the bedroom with us (on the floor) and brought the crate into the bedroom with us and left it open. She got to the point where she would sleep in her crate on her own, and so we started shutting the door at night.

Misty peed in the crate once -- a nasty learning experience for her (and a gross thing for us to clean up), and she hasn't done it since. She pooped in it once, too -- and again she learned to never do that again (too gross for her!). But now she's totally fine with being shut in her crate, and with the dog bed/cushion in there, she seems to find it very comfortable -- lying on her back with her legs in the air, etc. We also taught her to go into her crate whenever we say "Go home" by always giving her a small treat and a safe toy or chewie before shutting her in. It took about a month to get her totally comfortable with being shut her crate, and then we were able to FINALLY get her properly housetrained. (And I was FINALLY able to call the carpet cleaners!)

That's all with an adult dog! Toby will probably be easier and faster to crate train since he's still less than a year old. Good luck!

Thank you all so much for your advice. Toby is unfortunately spoiled by husband, so i have to convince my husband first to bring the crate back out but I will try. thanks again