Oscar is 16-1/2 months old. I expected to have a calm, non-chewing dog by the time he was a year old. Everyone said no . . give him 18 months. At 16-1/2 months, I’m thinking it’s going to be the 2 year birthday before we can expect a calmer dog. My friend, Cilla, was right . . IF he calms down by the time he’s two. It’s easy to say he hasn’t calmed down any but I know he has. He’s sitting on the loveseat next to me right now. He’s started sleeping later. Instead of him being awake by 5:30 or 6:00, if I am super quiet, he will sleep til almost 8. That makes a huge difference in my morning. He hasn’t had an accident in the house since he was 5 months old. He knows words/commands: treat, no, come, drop it, no biting, no barking (unless something is really bark worthy) and we almost have stay down. Of course, he knows outside, play and eat.
The last bed in his crate lasted about three months, which is two months, 29 days longer than most of the others had lasted.
He can still be terribly destructive. If we are leaving him alone more than five minutes – even for me to run outside and get the mail, I put him in the crate. The real problem we have now is that we have/had a wooden gate, which is a tri-fold spindled fence, of sorts. If I’m upstairs cooking and Vince is downstairs playing with him, he wants to come upstairs where I am. If I’m downstairs with him and Vince is upstairs doing something, he wants to go upstairs. He will start chewing.
He finally chewed completely through a spindle on one side so we flipped the gate around and this week, he chewed through a spindle on the other end so no matter how we positioned the barricade, he could just walk through it.
You can see on the left side, near the hinge, there’s a missing spindle and on the right side, near the middle, there’s a missing spindle.
When we realized this was going to happen so we ordered a new fence/gate. Before ever using it, since he now knows he can chew his way through, Vince cut pieces of plywood and put over the spindles.
Only two of the three pieces are necessary to keep him downstairs so Vince used two pieces on this one and two pieces on the old white one. On the far right side, which is the side Oscar faces, the solid wood piece will be what he sees. On that middle section, he only sees about 2″ of that, Vince put the wood on the back side so it wouldn’t interfere with the hinges. I don’t think he can really get to the spindles easily to chew since the wood is behind them. But, I’m beginning to believe nothing is impossible when Oscar decides he’s going to do it.
Of course, Oscar is scared to death of it right now because it’s new and won’t go near it but that won’t last long.
Arrowhead Gramma says
Have you thought of a wrought iron type fence/barricade rather than the wood? Just a thought.
judy.blog@gmail.com says
He would chew on that and probably ruin his teeth. I was hoping this was something we’d be using temporarily but maybe not. It isn’t a spot where we can use a gate that attaches to the walls. On one side, there is no wall so we have boxes stacked up and the wooden gate is against those. Then we have 5 gallon buckets of grain on each side to hold it up and we have to pick it up and move it for us to get out. There’s no place to slide it into so the wood is much lighter. We made it over a year with the one with spindles. Now that Vince had reinforced it with wood, hopefully by the time Oscar ruins this one, he’ll be a bit calmer and less destructive.
Rosalie says
I wonder what he’d do if he had a mirror there….
judy.blog@gmail.com says
I don’t know but we could probably get a stick on mirror to see what he’d do. Good idea!
Sandra Hutchins (Sandy Gail) says
I now have my new email address. My old one was hacked, and then I used my husband’s for awhile. When our Sparky was alive he was bad to chew on spindles and rocking chair rockers. He has been dead for a couple years after a long happy life, but we still have little doggie teeth marks on porch rails and spindles as well the rockers on the front porch chairs.
Your Nine Patch Extravaganza replacement book that I ordered from Amazon has arrived. I was sure that I had one, but we moved a couple of times. The good thing is there are good used ones for almost nothing now! It is a good reference book and there are a couple of quilts and some borders that I hope to try. Love your picture on the back cover!
judy.blog@gmail.com says
If I had on a red jacket, that’s a picture after I had just cut my own hair (way too short) and AQS called and said “we need a picture SOON”.
JustGail says
Instead of hoping Oscar’s energy levels get lower overall (like the volume of a radio or TV), thinking of him as operating in full-on or full-off modes (like a light) is probably more accurate. As he ages, his full-off modes will get longer. I think. I hope. If not, consider trying to outsmart or keep ahead of him as a good brain exercise to put off old age memory & thinking issues.