My dog eats everything-Is this mean?

[panicked]

Have you tried the bitter apple spray? Have you worked with a trainer?

[dearprudence]

I don't think it's cruel to have him crated at night. Especially if it's for his safety. Your dog should be sleeping at night anyway, so being in the crate isn't all that restrictive.

We've always crated at night until the dog is old enough to be trusted uncrated. Even when they're crated during the day.

[G22]

Sept 3, 2013 15:48:56 GMT -5 dearprudence said:

I don't think it's cruel to have him crated at night. Especially if it's for his safety. Your dog should be sleeping at night anyway, so being in the crate isn't all that restrictive.

We've always crated at night until the dog is old enough to be trusted uncrated. Even when they're crated during the day.

This is what I was going to say. We crated during the day when gone/at night until our dogs could be trusted. At night they are/should be sleeping anyways.

With our #3 dog, he eats alot of things. Not to the extent that your dog does, but he ate blankets, fabric toys, ropes, stuffed animals. We finally stopped giving all the dogs toys they could shred. They currently have a basket full of bones/unshreddable toys.

Also pup #3 no longer has a blankie because he ate it. A whole queen sized blanket! He would suck on it and then moved to eating it slowly. Somehow he has learned not to eat the dog beds. But I guarentee if I gave him another blanket, he'd eat it. We just learned to eliminate things he was eating, that he shouldn't be.

[patches31709]

I would definitely crate at night.

[Susie]

We crate Puppy Derkins (10 mos) at night as well as when we are not home, and plan to keep that up for a while. She can be a chewer when she's unsupervised. The crate is right next to our bed; she can smell us, hear us, and she's supposed to be sleeping anyway. Works just fine, although she has never had bed/furniture privileges (we don't roll that way) so that wasn't something we had to stop/break her of. It would not occur to me not to. It isn't a kindness to leave them loose to get into trouble.

IME, Bitter Apple helps, but isn't a panacea. There's another spray called Phooey that we've used on some problem areas that works better. I don't think it'd really solve such a pervasive chewing problem though.