Dog Is A Garbage Disposal With Four Legs

[Guest jlbfitz]

Hi, all,

 

We've had our girl for about six months. She is going to be three in another two weeks. In the last month, she's decided she wants to eat (not chew, eat) all kinds of weird things when she is unsupervised.

 

We walk her at least a mile twice a day, and give her a kong in the evening to work her brain. We confine her to our bedroom when we are at work, and she has a dog walker who comes and takes her out in the middle of the day. We are only gone about nine hours. She has plenty of toys to play with, and even an empty kong and a firehose toy to fill her chewing needs.

 

Nevertheless, instead of chewing on her chew toys (sometimes she will play with one stuffed toy she likes, but not all the time) she hunts around the room and finds any little thing that is out to eat. Plastic retainer cases. Part of a sock. Paper. Part of a blanket. The best part is that she will pick a random thing that she's ignored for months and then decide to eat it. It is almost always in the afternoon after the dog walker leaves, I think she is bored by then. We tried having the dog walker give her a kong as she left, but our girl just raced through it (normally she takes about 40 minutes to eat a kong, she'd have these done in 10) and then barked like crazy instead of going to sleep.

 

She howls if she's crated (hence the original bedroom-confinement situation) and she will work like crazy to take off a muzzle.

 

Our strategy right now is to hide everything possible so she can't get to it. Unfortunately our apartment is small, and laid out in such a way that this is the only practical room for confining her. She gets upset if she sees her people leave out the front door -- this is the only way her vision is blocked (I realize that sounds crazy, but it's true).

 

So that leaves me at this: Has anyone had any success teaching greyhounds to chew their chew toys? Or any grey-safe chews I could leave with her unsupervised? I know she needs stimulation mid afternoon, but instead of going after her own toys, she hunts for inedible "toys." Obviously this is a health risk for her. I'm just not sure what to do. Any advice would be very much appreciated.

[Time4ANap]

Sounds like you need to do some alone-training so she can have the run of the house. Search the site for "alone training" and there should be lots of good info,

 

Most greyhounds hate being behind closed doors in one room, and have been known to destroy mattresses and other furniture when locked behind closed doors. In most cases, doing alone-training and giving the run of the house, or most of the house where they can see what's going on takes care of a large number of these issues. You can still muzzle with giving run of the house, but eventually you may find that you have adopted the Houdini of muzzles.

 

Are you leaving a tv or radio on when you leave? Blocking outside noises with tv or music also helps them when left alone so they don;t hear every little noise and think that someone is home.

[Guest jlbfitz]

The struggle is that we've done so much alone training, and the only thing that really helps her is time and routine. Even the greyhound behaviorist was stumped. Putting her in the bedroom is the only thing that keeps her from howling. If we change her routine at all, she still gets stressed and upset. It's going to take a while for her to get settled. She is comfortable enough in the bedroom to sleep 90% of the time that she's alone.My concern with trying to muzzle her is mostly that she could get caught up trying to get it off. Also that it will upset her and make her bark/howl all day. She was pretty upset when we tried before, but it was right after we got her. But I also can't have her hunting out relatively well hidden inedible objects.

 

ETA she has both a white noise machine and a radio.

Edited November 2, 2016 by jlbfitz

[Scoutsmom]

Just a passing thought: What if you spread a thin layer of peanut butter on her chew toys? Maybe it will get her started chewing and when the peanut butter is gone, she will just carry on?

[turbotaina]

I'd up the exercise to begin with. I've got a chewer, too, and he does it when he's bored. Can you give her an hour long walk before you leave? And extend her evening walk? I know dog walkers are spendy, but if your walker can extend the walk, that's ideal. Does she have something *hard* to chew on? My guy loves wood and hard plastic, so we got him a fairly indestructible Nylabone that he works on occasionally. It's a bit big for him, but he'll pick it up and gnaw when he needs to get some energy out.

[PrairieProf]

Muzzle. My girl is a counter-surfer and I could never leave her without it, I do it all the time without any problem whatsoever. They are really not on that tightly and if something got caught it would pull off. Your dog may fuss at first but she will be fine. If she ever made it even to training in a race kennel she is very, very used to a turnout muzzle.

Edited November 2, 2016 by PrairieProf

[BatterseaBrindl]

^^^^

 

Muzzle

[denisetanaka]

I have mine for 5 months, she is 3yo, on the first/two months she was doing this, collecting everything from the apartment, chewing. What we did were trying to avoid let anything near her, we hide all the shoes, socks, tried to put everything away. But I know it's hard and always we miss something, so we started to muzzle her, she got so sad because of that, next couple of days she just stopped chewing stuff.

We also tried to let lot of toys with a thin layer of peanut butter or layer of her favorite tooth paste (poultry flavored), I bought a Bob-A-Lot (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001JQLNB4/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 ), which is a kind of more sophisticated kong, but kong also distracts her a lot.

Another good thing that sometimes we do, is hide some treats at home, so she can chase them when she is alone.

 

I think the keys are:muzzling in the beginning, exercise and treats.

After this 2 months she just collects shoes if we let them, but just that.

[Guest shanesmom]

Had a greyhound with severe separation anxiety years ago that would eat non edible items when left home alone. While we worked on alone training and his separation anxiety he was muzzled when alone. It was for his safety. I put peanut butter in the muzzle before I put it on him and he was so focused on that he didn't notice us leaving. It took some time but he did get over the separation anxiety as long as the schedule didn't change and he did not have to be muzzled after a while either.

[GeorgeofNE]

I've never met a dog who tolerated being locked in a room.

 

But I see that that actually seems to work best. The muzzle is the simple and obvious solution.

 

I suppose their is a miniscule chance she could get her foot stuck in it somehow, but it's far more likely to just pop off, or break. Her muzzle, not her foot!

[Sundrop]

Our current girl is kind of crazy like that - we noticed that she loved all the toys we have (lots and lots of stuffies) - but we noticed that while chewing, she didn't just "tear them up" like some of our greys would do - she would eat the bits she chewed off. Then we started finding half-eaten plastic squeakers, half-eaten tennis balls, etc. This is, by the way, while we were home - not separation anxiety.

 

She is a little destructive, too - sometimes when we are home and sometimes when we are gone. She started taking things out of the recycle bin I have at my desk (I work from home) so I put a large cover on top. She started stealing magazines off tables, so I moved them all. She grabbed a couple of books, so I move those now. She raided the bathroom bin, so I bought a new one with a lid. She loooooooves to steal toilet paper rolls, so I have to close the bathroom doors. You get the picture.

 

Honestly, she has stopped eating her toys now (we've had her 7 months). She has a couple she likes to really chew on, but we are no longer finding half-eaten stuffies (or finding purple, pink, orange and yellow bits in the yard *ahem*). She will, however, still eat the plastic squeakers (so we throw them away as soon as we see a stuffie die) and she does still enjoy prowling the house for things to chew and/or eat.

 

We've only had one other greyhound who was destructive, and he was bad, but random (he'd go 6 months and be fine and then one day we'd come home and find a huge mess). We've considered crating our current girl when we leave, but she exhibits this behavior when we are home, too - so it's tough. We don't want to muzzle b/c then we'd have to muzzle our boy, too, and he hates them. You might have more luck since you have an only dog.

 

How old is your girl? Our chewer is only 3 and honestly she's a bit neurotic, overall. She was a bounce and I don't think her previous "family" treated her very well - so I'm hoping with age, training, exercise and time she will outgrow this.

[Scoutsmom]

Awww--the joys of a 2-3 year old. My second grey was 2 when I adopted her. I had all sorts of these problems until one day, when she was about 4, she decided to grow up and become an adult. This is why I much prefer adopting older "adult" greyhounds. Give me a calm 6 year old any time.

 

The only advice I have for the original poster is to consider rotating her toys. Leave out a couple and put the rest away. After a few days, change which ones are out to be played with. This should help keep her from becoming bored with her toys. And remember that, unlike a kid that takes 20+ years to become an adult, you only have to wait a couple years! Enjoy and Good Luck.

[GeorgeofNE]

I want to say something else: the dog walker seems to make things worse!

 

A healthy adult dog does NOT need to be let out in the middle of the day and for a dog with some SA, being left TWICE is two times as bad as being left once.

 

You might give the dog walker a one week vacation and see if it helps.

 

I tried a dog walker with my SA dog, and it made him even more miserable.