Jeff is about a year and a half, and since I work an 8-5 job, he stays in the guest bedroom (with the door shut) when I am not home. His crate is in there, but the crate door is left open, so he has access the rest of the room. I started doing this at about a year old- before that, he stayed in his crate with the crate door shut. 

There were no issues for awhile- I have a camera in there, and he was almost always just sleeping or sitting on the bed. Lately though, I come home to something new that was chewed! So far it has been the pillows on the bed or the wooden bed frame itself. It could be the weather- in Michigan right now it's far too cold to go on long walks in the morning before I leave for work. In the summer I would walk him for about 15 minutes before leaving. Now it's just until he goes potty. How can I keep my room from getting destroyed everyday in the winter though? 

Where do you keep your dogs? I don't want to keep him constrained, but I'm afraid he is still too much of a chewer to have much freedom :/ 

I'll add that I do usually stop home at lunch to let him out and play a little. Additionally, he goes to a pet resort about twice a month to get some socialization/exercise. I cannot afford to do that daily or weekly though. 

Thank you!

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Come up with some indoor play ideas to burn some of that energy. A great way is either a laser pointer or for Franklin I use a lunge whip (or flirt pole). You can get him chasing and running and wear him out. Interactive toys work great as well. Until you can burn off that extra energy he should remain crated. He has to earn his freedom when you are gone. 

When Winston was around 10 months to a year, I started letting him have free range of the house while I was out at class and/or work. He was doing really well for quite a few months. At about 14 months or so, he started to gnaw on the baseboards of the apartment, chewing a tennis ball sized hole in the painted wall and everything! He even destroyed his bed.

 

Even though he was responsible enough to not potty in the house, he wasn't quite disciplined enough to not get into trouble. After fixing the wall and replacing his bed, I started crating him while I was gone from home again. After a few weeks, I tried letting him have free range in smaller increments again but I made sure he had plenty of chew toys for boredom relief. Everytime I was successful, I lengthened the time I was away by a ten or so minutes. Eventually, I felt good enough to leave him out and about for classes. When that went well, I figured we were on the right track again. Since then, we've been pretty relaxed. Winston still loves his crate, but now I mostly come home from work and see him snuggled up on my bed, haha.  

Thanks for all the great suggestions! I've tried a mixture of them this week. I tried to make our lunch time breaks more active rather than making it solely to go potty. I will have to just get up earlier and brave the cold in the mornings I think :) When I walked him in the morning, gave him a frozen kong, let him out at lunch, and gave him another bone or kong afterward he did not chew at all in the room. 

Today I cannot make it home on lunch, so to ensure his safety I left him crated. I know this is for the best, but I really have extreme guilt! I keep looking at his doggie cam, and he is just sitting in there. Tonight we have obedience class, so I am hoping that will make up for the time I left him alone today. 

Kaitlyn,

We just received an IQ ball in our BarkBox this month and I just tried it today with Foxy at lunch and she LOVED IT!!!  She usually pesters us to play at lunch and the whole hour we were home she just chased her ball.  I wanted to give it to her supervised the first time to make sure she couldn't chew it up.  I think it will offer lots of play time and stimulation mentally.  I just put a few kernels of her dog food in there and it you can adjust the whole inside to what is appropriate for the food inside it.  It is sold by ourpets.com  I'm sure they have them at the pet stores too.  Just a thought on keeping him busy.

P.S. I don't know how you can watch him with a webcam I'd be feeling guilty all day every day LOL!

Thanks Becky! I am looking into finding that ball at a local pet store, but I may have to just order it online. 

You are right about the camera, it mostly makes me feel guilty! Buuut it does give me some peace of mind that he is safe all day and also not in trouble (usually). I do smile when I can see him sound asleep curled up on some blankets :) It is handy to check to see if my dog walkers show up when they say they do hehe

Great burglar camera, too... A homeowner here was able to get the perps who entered his house arrested when he saw them on his webcam as they were moving around inside the house. The cops got there before the burglars left! :-D

Heh. Wouldn't it be great if we had a webmicrophone, too! "Hey! You! Yeah, you -- the one with the ears! Get OFF that counter! Baaaad dawg!"

You are welcome.  Foxy was playing with it again last night.  Honestly probably one of the best "learning" toys I've seen. 

Lol good point on the dog walkers.  You are right it would give a peace of mind. 

Good luck to you!

we actually found that linus behaves better when he has the whole house. when he was confined to just a few rooms he would ruin everything from the carpet to anything in the room that he could reach. now that he has the house he can entertain himself by moving around to all of his favorite places.

Cassie, who mercifully was past the stage of predating on the furniture by the time she came to live with me, retires to the soft fluffy rug in the back bathroom, where she's built a nest. However, I'm not out of the house on a 9 to 5 basis.

You have icy winters. We have hellish summers. Same net result: several months a year where a good doggy-walk is...well, a challenge. Do you have a long hallway? Cassie loves to chase balls, and she'll run up and down a hall that opens onto four bedrooms for as long as the human can stand to throw the ball. The human scarfs breakfast at a table that has a clear view of said hall. Sooooo... I can throw the ball (over and over and over again...) while I'm trying to eat and read the paper.

anNOYing...but it does give the li'l dog a bit of a run in the morning. If she were a puppy, would it be enough to defuse her furniture-consuming cravings? Prob'ly not.

With the GerShep, the answer to that was BABY GATES. Even a German shepherd will not jump a baby gate unless the human is on the other side; a corgi would be challenged to do so. Baby gate across the hallway (Target sometimes sells one that stretches all the way across a standard tract-house bedroom hallway). Baby gate across the doors to the rooms with delicious furniture (or...if AC isn't the issue, close the bedroom doors). Either baby-gate him IN someplace with lots of toys to play with, chew on, and try to extract treats from, or baby-gate him OUT (with lots of toys to play with, chew, on and try to extract treats from).

LOL! I used to have a cat that would grab one end of a roll of toilet paper and carry it throughout the house, leaving a long trail of TP that went from room to room. Bathroom. Door. Close.

We gate Sophie in the kitchen while we are at work. She loves to climb (onto the back of the sofa, chairs, etc.) but since she has seizures, we don't want to risk her having on and falling off from there. The kitchen is the safest place for her since there is nothing for her climb onto (and the floor is easy to clean in case she does have a seizure and loses bladder control). We throw a handful of kibble or little treats on the floor when we leave so she has to nose around to find them (takes her only a little while but she loves the game). We also leave a couple of chew toys and a bed for her to rest on, which she frequently drags over to right in front of the heat vent! We're in WI and have the same weather that you do, too. We also take her out for a nice walk when we get home, regardless of the weather. She decides how long she wants to be out. I just put on my heavy parka, snow pants and boots and away we go. Our first corgi we crated until she was two years old, after she did a little "woodworking" on our kitchen cabinets and dining room table when hubby left her out because he felt sorry for her at about a year old.

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