So, our 6 year old corgi, Cabo, has been with us for a little over a year. We adopted him from a farm where he was one of ten dogs on the farm. He has adapted very well to living in the house with the two of us and our 10 year old cat. He is walked twice in the morning before we go to work, and then at least twice in the evening when we get home. He is in the crate for about 9 hours a day while we are at work. For the most part, this has worked fine. He has not had any accidents or problems with his crate.
We had one time last summer when he had "crate problems". We were taking care of our neighbor's dogs and in an effort to not have their dog in the crate too much, we brought the dog to our house during the day when we were home. The dogs interacted together fine, but Cabo made it clear to us he did not approve by urinating and defecating in the house and trying to break out of his crate over the next few days. We reinforced the crate with rip ties and didn't bring the dog to our house again. Fast forward to this past weekend. We watched the neighbor's dogs again - and after the lesson we learned last time, did not bring the dog into our house. But, we did walk the dogs together. Well, that still seems ot have resulted in some sort of jealousy or anxiety in Cabo.
When I came home from work on Thursday, Cabo was out of his metal crate and his head was covered in blood. He had used his head to push the crate open on one corner and had actually broken off four pieces of the crate resulting in some pretty bad gashes on his head. There was fur and blood all over the crate, blood all over the kitchen, and lamps and other things knocked over throughout the house. Cabo was fine, but definitely out of sorts. Today, we went to the vet as he has not been eating and we were worried he might have more injuries than we first thought. Luckily, after the vet examined him, it seems like he is ok and probably just tired and sore.
So, the question now is, what do we do? We're not really comfortable leaving him and the cat together without some sort of boundary. and, Cabo has proven that without some sort of boundary in place, he will pee and poop in the house. Will a baby gate be strong enough to stop our Cabo? And, we really don't want to change our entire routine because we think we know this is connected to the "other dog" and we don't plan to watch the other dog anymore.
Any thoughts or advice?
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