A very bad dog.

[WIPs]

Awww...all your guyses dogs are cute!

[red_phooka]

Your dog is beautiful, by the way - however devillish 
I am lucky enough that my doggers doesn't chew - but I do have a little siamese mix who loves to gnaw on yarn and needles - I have to keep everything under lock and key with her. I'm hoping to get a German Shepherd pup in the next year - I'm sure I'll end up posting something similar to this soon enough 

[Ameythestlily]

       Four months into having my lovely Shippo (long haired Dachshund 2yrs old, I'll have to find some pics to put up), he ate 1 and 1/2 size 15 bamboo knitting needles. Luckily he never had a love for yarn, that was always Charlie's place (large grey kitty, the first few times I knit after getting him he would chew through the yarn I was working on so that he could steal the balls). Oh and I don't even wanna think about all the woodwork we're going to have to replace at home and my in-laws house from when Shippo was in his chewy stage
     Now they just crawl into my lap while I'm working so that I have to spend time admiring them ("no mommy you don't wanna craft...you wanna give us scritches till daddy sits down"). They eventually grow out of it. We found that if we gave Shippo a plastic soda bottle (20 oz size) he'd chew on that instead (now he expects to get them everytime the hubby finishes his sodas).

[PaperBag]

oh no!! haha

My dogs are crated whenever we're not home, so we normally don't have problems... Somehow one day, though, I must not have been watching our doxie... He ended up in my bag of yard and got completely wrapped up in it and started barking/crying/screaming for us to come save him. It was so adorable LOL

Spending the evening untangling/re-balling the yarn? Not so adorable.

[Souldier]

This is why I firmly believe in crating your dog when you are not at home.

I have a jack russell terrier and an american staffordshire terrier. For their own safety, and my sanity, I crate them whenever I leave the house. If I didn't... actually I don't even want to think about what would happen if I didn't.

Crating your dog is beneficial in many ways. Firstly it creates a comfort zone for them (in time) which will make travelling or moving much easier on the dog. It becomes a place where your dog can hide out whenever he doesn't want to be bothered.
It also prevents disasterous situations such as the one in this post which can lead to a dog's death or a huge vet bill. Imagine if your dog had ingested that yarn and pieces of that cushion? This could have easily turned into a visit to the vet followed by surgical removal of the objets he ate. Imagine if you didn't know that he ingested something, by the time you noticed something was wrong, this type of clogging could lead to a dog becoming toxic. This is hard to fight, and can easily lead to his death.

The dog eventually sees the crate as his den and feels safe and comfortable in it. My dogs go in their crate on their own for quiet time or whenever they want to be alone. My Jack Russell LOVES his crate so much that whenever I say "kennel" he runs into his with his tail wagging. This is because I have always associated the kennel as a positive thing by giving treats and plenty of "good dogs" which let my dogs know that this kennel is a good thing.

Getting your dog to accept and love his crate is really easy. Obviously the first step is to make it comfortable. The second step is to make him realize that crating is not a bad thing or a punishment. This can be accomplished by your attitude towards the crate. NEVER use it as a punishment. Always keep your tone upbeat and give lots of rewards (treats/petting/and verbal). To train your dog to go in his crate on command is easy too. Open the crate door, say "Kennel" and point into the enclosure. If your dog does not follow this command, simply give him a little help. Tell him "good kennel" and give him a treat. Just keep repeating this and he'll get it eventually.

When you go to buy a crate, size is important. Your dog should only have enough room to stand up and turn around. The best thing to do would be to bring your dog with you and have the person at the pet store help you.

As for what to put in the crate, well that depends. If your dog is really destructive, I would stick with simple padding or an old blanket. No toys. I don't give my dogs toys in their kennel because my Jack Russell likes to destroy. Instead I give them each an Alpo chewy rawhide (fully digestible) to keep them busy for a while.

Once your dog gets used to his crate, he'll love it and you'll have piece of mind.

[nillakitty]

Awww... I love all the puppy pics!

I'm sorry, but this isn't the dogs fault.

On the days when you know you can't give her the exercise she NEEDS, you need to make sure important things are where she can't get them.

Just to be clear, I KNOW this...  I don't blame her for being occasionally eat-y, I just wanted to cry about my losses...

As for the safety concerns, all yarn & accessories are kept out of her reach- she actually pulled the storage basket off a shelf and rifled though it for this adventure, but worry not, accessability is remedied! 

And as for crating, I'm all for it, but the hubby's not.  Also, she has a great (and big) crate that really doesn't fit anywhere in our <1000 sq. ft. home, which I am willing to deal with, but again with the hubby... and Laika was stuck in it for two months straight when she broke her leg last winter, so she doesn't have the best relationship with it now...

Despite her occasional bad behavior, she's the best dog ever, in my humble opinion!  It's pretty had to get mad at that face, I tell you.  We have a schedule to keep her as exercised as possible, but since we can't really afford to get her into any formal program, it's usually the dog park (and some hiking, play dates, and walks thrown in) that does the best job!  My town just opened a new one recently, so we're all pretty excited about that...

Thanks for the opinions/advice! 

[DAME EMMA]

It WILL get better as she gets older.
Miss Lucy (see avatar) is some sort of pit mix, and was a HUGE chewer as a pup. In her first two years she ate:

two tv clickers
a cel phone
a chair
countless pairs of shoes
the windowsill (!)
plants
important work papers (my bad for leaving them on the coffee table)
etc.
Thankfully, I took up the knitting after she had passed through that horrible stage. She's seven now, and good as gold. But we really, really weren't sure if it would ever stop, for a while.

[Mnemosyne_LA]

Ah, yes, pets and yarn.  I have a Very Bad Kitty myself.




Yes, he chewed the circular needle off the ball of yarn and then started playing with the needle.  It's the needles he likes to play with, not so much the yarn, but I still hide it all from him just in case.  Kitty eating yarn means big bad expensive vet visit for abdominal surgery to remove it -- not a fun time for anyone!

[1QueenofCrochet]

awwwwww, all the dogs are so cute.  It will get better, we have a pitt bull mix and he had a thing for wood....he ate approx 6 chairs  but as you pointed out, they are cute and good, I wouldn't trade him for anything really.

[laceypooh]

aww i can definitely feel your pain.  i have a 15 month old english mastiff (he's a BIG boy!) and lately my boyfriend and i have been extra busy and he has just been a terror.  i feel bad because i get mad and upset when he destroys things, when i know he is just bored cause we're at work/school.  a couple weeks ago he crapped on 2 textbooks ($200) that i had to clean off and continue to use because like i'm going to shell out the money for new ones...    and today i was gone for an hour, and i don't know what got into him but i came home to a half eaten chuck taylor (a pink one, my favorite!), destroyed sunglasses, and the plug chewed off of my phone charger.  i was so upset but i knew why he did it and i that i shouldn't have left them out in the open, and his face is sooooo adorable.  so i forgave him.  but ::sigh::  he's expensive.    luckily though he has never touched my knitting.  ::knocks on wood::

i would crate my boy, but he is so big and we live in a small apartment, the crate would take up half a room.  just not gonna happen at the moment.  maybe when we get a bigger place.

here's my boy, Sir Mack.  oh and the other one is the boyfriend.



EDIT:  forgot he was already on my avatar, but oh well.  he's cute.