OK, little update on Artemis...

She's right at 8 months old. Long story short, we HAD to start crating her during the day because she was destroying the house and hurting herself. We had been leaving her in the kitchen/dining area (linoleum) but she started eating the cabinets, would climb up on cabinets, actually pulled dishes out of the sink and shattered them on the floor, etc. It was bad. I came home one day and she had shattered my Scentsy and cut herself so I decided from that point that she had to go in the crate.

We've been crating her during the work day (4 days a week for about 8 hours) and she is getting worse and worse by the day. She has completely destroyed the kennel (wire) to the point where the only thing holding it together are the tie wraps. The fur on her snout is rubbed off. She slobbers so much you literally can't walk in the room... there's just pools and pools of saliva and she's soaking wet and dingy looking. She's pulled a shower curtain in with her, towels, etc so that room has now been cleared. She typically "walks" the cage across the bathroom (I'm assuming beating on it) and today actually chewed about an 8" hole in the carpet AND a good sized chunk of the crate flooring.

I am at my wits end here and my husband is about to make me give her up. I've tried the Thundershirt, all of the "calming agents" you can find at Petsmart. The vet won't give me anything for sedation and tells me she just needs to go to obedience school. I work with her pretty much every day and she does great on general commands (even "come") so I don't know what else to do.

I really, really, really don't want to put her outside. It's June and already around 95 degrees every day, plus we only have a cyclone fence and there are TONS of stray cats in our neighborhood.

Does anyone have ANY suggestions??? I really don't want to lose her but it might be the best thing. I really don't want to see her hurt herself!

Guess I should mention... as long as we're here and the door's open, she loves her crate. She goes in it all the time to nap, etc. It's when you close the door... and ESPECIALLY when we leave.

And she goes this crazy if it's 5 minutes or 5 hours. The towel/shower curtain incident literally happened within 5 minutes.

Never had a puppy so I've never really had much destruction to deal with. Just the usual advice, more exercise, doggy day care, and toys like stuffed Kong or something long lasting. Then there is always the husky playmate option. Someone else I'm sure will chime in, good luck!

Woooow! Mine used to be pretty bad, but not that bad. Sorry you're going through this. Do you guys have a local dog daycare you can bring her to during the day?

We have similar issues with Hayden. Have you tried perhaps taking her to doggie daycare?

first thing that comes to mind is thank god we never had that issue!!!!
ok so i would say get a new crate, bolt it to something that is heavy, like some backer board with a tile top on it to prevent the digging and eating of the base of the crate and the tile will make it impossible for her to dig up and easy to clean if you have to. have you tried crating her in other rooms? do you close the door on her in the bathroom while crated? maybe crating her in a area or "room with a view" will help calm her down some, have you tried leaving the TV or radio on?
what HAVE you done to make creating an enjoyable time? have you read our sticky? https://www.itsahuskything.com/t918-crate-training

i would really try to start all over with her training, sounds like you should have started a bit sooner once the destruction started in the kitchen.

i hope i could help some....good luck, would hate for you to lose her cause of your hubby

I would third the doggy daycare idea. You may not even have to do it every day, we get away with 2 days per week. We recently had to start crating Ghost for upwards of 8 hours a day because Aaron finally got a good job. She spent her entire puppyhood with someone in the house pretty much full time, so she really hadn't spent much time in her crate. We've only had one problem since starting her at daycare, and that was the week after Memorial Day when we skipped our normal Tuesday daycare session and she shredded her bed while we were at work on Wednesday. Definitely look into it, and try to squeeze in a bit more exercise where you can. I get the heat thing too, we have the same weather as you guys and it's *miserable* here. Good luck!

Are you exercising her before you crate her? Perhaps if you leave her tired she will be less likely to act so insane.

This sounds like separation anxiety to me. You said she was destructive both in and out of her crate, correct? We dealt with this with Delilah, when she was an adult. We had to place her in a room that was cleared for awhile, that meant the ENTIRE bathroom had to be cleared of its contents before crated her. She would destroy anything she could. Rolls of toilet paper, towels, cords, the cat little box. Mind you, this only happened when we were gone. If we were home she would go lay in it no problem.

First, is there anything in the crate with her while she is in it? If so, remove it. Some of them can't stand anything in there with them.

Second, you have to stay persistent. We just removed what she could destroy and continued to crate her. She can't think she will win.

Third, I do not suggest sedatives. You don't want to have to drug your dog every time you leave. I would start getting her acclimated to you leaving by giving her a treat when you leave her in the crate and giving her a treat when she is calm and lying in her crate when you are home. Reinforce when she behaves. When you let her out, and she isn't being destructive treat her, if she has been, don't treat her. She will get the message.

It will just take perseverance.

Thankfully I don't need to crate my dogs, but when I once tried to start crating Koda since he went through some tough things and we had to move and I was afraid he'd have separation issues (at this time he was maybe 14 months- old old forum members will remember this)... he HATED the crate. If anything was in it, destroyed. Anything near it, destroyed. Warped the bars of the crate, would cry, tore up the bottom part, he has some enamel missing off the back of his bottom two canines from warping the bars, etc. And I did EVERYTHING you are suppose to. Several mile run/hike/dog park prior to crating, a bone or a stuffed frozen kong, TV on, something like a twist'n'treat, yadda yadda. Just did not work. I took him to daycare 5 times a week (and in my area at the time, this was about $500 a month!) and pretty much never left home because I couldn't stand him being so upset. I DID try clomicalm and it truly did help him simmer down in the crate. He wouldn't try to break out, focused on whatever distraction I had in there, or go to sleep. I also found Koda liked the airline crates as opposed to the wire ones.


I ended up never having to crate him(I randomly decided to see if he was back to his old self and hallelujah, left out and just chilling! but he had never had to be crated before from puppyhood to 14 months and I just sort of got scared because he knocked the trash over and scratched the door frame, and the situation we went through was so rough I was scared he'd continue to act out) and just went through on training him incase we ever had some sort of situation arises that would cause him to need to be crated, and thankfully as he's gotten older he is fine with crates now, but when we did the initial training and were trying to figure out how to have him relax in his crate, the clomicalm really helped.

I agree with doggy daycare being a really good alternative but know some people just can't invest that kind of money in it.

I agree with the others who suggest doggy daycare, at least as a temporary solution while you start crate-training again. It sounds like you need to go back to basics with the crate-training.

You say that she goes crazy when you close the door on the crate, even when you are there, so I don't think it is just separation anxiety, although that is probably a big part of it.

When you are there, try closing the door and then opening it right away again. Reward her for not going crazy in that split second, and next time leave it closed for a split second longer. The idea is that she stays below threshold, i.e. she never gets to the point where she starts to go crazy, but you can gradually build up the time that the door is closed.

The same goes with leaving the room/house. Leave the room when she is in the crate and then return immediately (literally shut the door and then go back in). Praise and reward her for not going crazy, and then build up the time.

You could also give her a kong in the crate, and only ever let her have a kong in the crate, so that she has something good to associate with it. But if she's too stressed, she's not going to be interested in it.

The trouble is that the quickest way to deal with this is to keep her below threshold (so she's not reacting) all the time, and that's going to be impossible if you have to leave her there for eight hours. If there isn't a doggy daycare near you, is there a friend or neighbour who you trust who could look after her during the day?

At first we were leaving her in the large kitchen/dining room. She rocked the crate up against the walls and destroyed the sheetrock. I put the crate under a small dining table and she moved crate and table completely across the room and blocked the door (I had to enter the house through another door just to get inside). That's when we moved her to the bathroom because the walls are tiled about 5 feet up. She is moving the kennel enough to where she can chew on the bathroom cabinets from inside the kennel and then, of course, moving it to the doorway and getting the carpet. I had left the plastic tray in the kennel because i thought if she tried to dig, she might hurt herself with the wires of the crate floor.

As far as positives... When you tell her "bed" she runs to her crate. She LOVES her frozen pumpkin Kong so I give her that. I put treats in there throughout the evening. And like I said, she naps in the crate so I don't think it's an aversion to the crate itself. However, she has ALWAYS and I mean ALWAYS totally freaked out when the kennel door closes and she realizes she can't get to us. She might not want to be around us all the time but she definitely wants the option of getting to us if she wants.

I tried crating her at night from day one and she would work herself into the same frenzy that she is now. Slobbering, howling, scratching... for HOURS straight until she was dehydrated and lethargic. I finally stopped penning her at night while we worked on short durations in the locked crate while we were home. I don't have to drag her to her crate or anything. Every morning I tell her "bed" and she runs in there and sits while I shut the door and put like 50 million caribiners on the doors LOL. And when I let her out in the evenings, she just lays there and waits for you to open the door. Don't get me wrong, she's anxious to get out, but she's not scratching or tearing at the door to get out. She knows she has to act right or she doesn't get out.

I leave for work at 4:30 a.m. so I guess I'm going to have to start getting up at 2:30 to go exercise her. That really doesn't make much of a difference though. We were at the deer lease and she was so tired she could hardly keep her head up but as soon as we kenneled her and left to run to the store (30 min) she went into panic mode. We got back and it was the same drooly mess.

Doggy daycare would be great but we don't have one around here. I've had to kennel her at the vet's office when I go out of town for work and they said she does the same thing while she's there (and that's in a dog run with other dogs around).

She's good going in... good coming out, it's the "inbetween" we're having trouble with. I can go out of the front door and hear her but as soon as I open the front door she immediately calms and lays down because she knows she has to "settle" to get out. I just need someone to stand at my front door and open/close it all day!

Bahaha, or get another pup so she isn't alone....

Montana had the same fits you are describing. I tried everything suggested and nothing worked. Finally, when the crate tray was destroyed, I decided to buy a plastic crate instead of replacing the tray. It worked! It turned out that she got anxious from the wire crate because she didn't feel safe, her wire crate didn't have the den "feel" I guess.

One question, did you have her in a plastic crate when she was younger? I had Montana in a plastic one and then when she grew out of it, a family member gave me the wire one. When I put her back in a plastic crate, the results were immediate. I hope this helps.

This is a bad case of separation anxiety. Most dogs destroy things when owners aren't home because they have never been trained how to be alone.

You need to start back as if your dog was 8 weeks. Praising her whenever she goes in the crate on her own, when she does and if she looks comfortable, say she is lying down, gently close the door, don't lock it just close it until it is say 1 inch open. Then step back. Praise her for being good, treat her if you want. You can try covering the top of the crate with a piece of plywood, I have done this for both my dogs as they really do like to feel as if they are in a den. And she can't pull that into the crate and destroy it, they also make crate covers that fit so tight it probably couldn't be pulled in. If she begins to howl or yell or whatever, wait for even the briefest of a break in the whining and open the door. Calmly (you must be calm, don't be over exuberant) tell her good girl. Then move on. Keep doing this as much as you can when you find her in the crate by herself. Once you can get her to accept the door being closed, move out of sight even if only for a few seconds. Then reappear and let her out. She needs to know that indeed you will come back, and when you do you will have treats.

The other trick to all of this is to be sure she is really truly tired when you put her in the crate. You can ease separation anxiety you just need to find what will work with her.

I also agree that you really don't want to have to resort to drugging her. You may need the help of a professional trainer.

I wish you all the luck!

LOL I suggested that and the hubby said not no but h*ll no!

mheath0429 wrote:

Bahaha, or get another pup so she isn't alone....

Yep! I went through this with Mya until she was about 2 years old (she was bad!!!). I would get home to her covered in poop and the bars of the crate bent almost daily. We too had tried leaving her in an enclosed area before crating her and she ate THROUGH the wall. So bad that I could almost stick my face in the hole That's when she went in the crate Mya is now 6 and has been given free roam of the house since she was almost 4 years old, but those 2 years were horrible! When we got Kody at 12 weeks he was fine in his crate. When we got Asia at 6 months she too was fine in her crate. Just had a few accidents, but no separation anxiety issues at all. I'm 99% sure that it's because they're not alone.

I know you shouldn't get another dog to keep your first dog calm, but it helps

You might find this page by Pat Miller on separation anxiety helpful. You might want to seek help from a behaiourist who will use positive reinforcement methods with her, because the more she behaves like this the more ingrained the behaviour will become.

Of course you could just get another dog and see if that solves the problem

That's what we're doing... starting from the beginning. But we're at the point where she HAS to be crated during the day. (Husky vs. Taxes... Husky vs. Spaghetti Noodles... Husky vs. bag of flour... Husky vs. dishes... etc.) She absolutely can't be left alone loose.

Is it counterproductive to train in the evenings, baby steps, and then just lock her up during the day??? I feel like it's not accomplishing anything!

Karen124 wrote:

That's what we're doing... starting from the beginning. But we're at the point where she HAS to be crated during the day. (Husky vs. Taxes... Husky vs. Spaghetti Noodles... Husky vs. bag of flour... Husky vs. dishes... etc.) She absolutely can't be left alone loose.

Is it counterproductive to train in the evenings, baby steps, and then just lock her up during the day??? I feel like it's not accomplishing anything!

lol I hear you!

Do you have any dog walkers you could hire? Or better yet a friend thats at home during the day that could stop by and take her for a walk?

Seriously, I am telling you right now that it was the greatest thing we ever did for Delilah. So many of the issues went away - I am so happy we got Cato and so is Delilah. She hasn't shredded anything since.

Have you tried covering the crate with a blanket of towel.??

I really don't have a lot of help Kerian loves the crate she goes into it all the time no problem she came trained that way just adopted her 3 weeks ago.

Now Blaze does not like the crate but he will go into his when we leave the house.

Kerian's crate is in the living room with a cover over part of it. she gets upset when she doesn't have access to it.

Blaze's crate is fold up and only put out when we leave the house. My husband works from home everyday so these pups have free access most days to house.

Definitely can't cover the crate with anything that she can pull into it. That's what happened to the shower curtain and at least three towels. I'm debating on trying the plastic crate.

If you haven't tried the plastic airliner crates first, I would do that and give it a try.

Otherwise I would really look into medication (comicalm) coupled with crate training... While starting at he beginning will help in time, you can't continue to have her work herself into a fit everyday. It's not healthy- mentally.