5 1/2 month old puppy and DH's new leather chair :(

[get the red out]

We got our puppy, Layla, at 8 weeks from the local animal shelter. She is a very smart, active, loving little girl. We had been successful at teaching her not to chew on furniture UNTIL my husband got the idea to buy himself a new leather chair. The chair was completely unmolested for a couple of weeks, then without warning Layla tore out and chewed up a square foot section on the right side. I repaired as best as I could with some materials from the local fabric store, then she tore out my repair, then I repaired again and covered that side of the chair. No avail, she tore out the repair again. I told my husband that when I come home for lunch from work to let her out to potty, she is sleeping, then when he gets in during the afternoon the chair is torn up so I would put her in the kitchen at lunch today to prevent her afternoon chair attack. WELL, she attacked the OTHER side of the chair THIS MORNING and I found it at lunch. Great, little missy still went in the kitchen (with all necessary doggie items accompanying her of course).

She is an active pup, but I walk her every morning and evening along with playing ball with her to get her running for a decent amount of time after our walks. I am getting her about 45 minutes exercise both morning and evening now that she is older (this morning it was an hour). I am pretty active for a 46 year old so I've not been lazy about this, I wanted a dog to keep up with me walking which is one reason I didn't want a toy dog. She also gets to socialize and play with neighboring dogs and about weekly at the dog park. We live in a condo so I've been absolutely paranoid about making sure she gets socialization and exercise; and she's absolutely wonderful with every dog and person she encounters. Until the chair appeared she had never even approached the trash, even with food scraps inside (and still hasn't), and had only ever nibbled furniture from which she was easily discouraged. She is teething right now, she opened her mouth to yawn and I saw a big dog tooth among all the little sharp baby teeth. I am thinking this may have had something to do with it, along with the fact that we have allowed her to chew raw hide treats.

If anyone has any input it would be appreciated. She's normally a pretty calm pup inside, or at least easily discouraged from misbehavior. Layla is the first dog I have had in my adult life so I may not know all I should. But my husband has had dogs and HE was the one who bought the leather chair, LOL. We love this dog so much that the chair would go to the dumpster tomorrow if that is what it took. We got her just after my Dad died and my husband has also been ill off and on (wonder if him being in the hospital and suddenly gone for a few days when the first chair attack happened had some effect also). She has been my little companion through some hard times already.

[MiniMe]

1. Leather is particularly tempting for puppies

You don't say what kind of puppy Layla is, some breeds chew more than others. Your best bet is to keep her confined somewhere, either in a crate or with a gate until she can be trusted. Which won't be until she is close to a year old. Confine her when you can't keep a close eye on her. And you have the right idea, a tired puppy is a good puppy. But puppies don't usually sleep for very long. Provide her with her own toys that she can chew.

[get the red out]

3. She is the pup in the picture on my posts

They told us Border Collie mix at the shelter when we adopted her, she looks Border Collie, but is turning out smaller and with a personality that doesn't completely correspond to one, so mix is the operative word.

Yesterday afternoon and today Layla is in "kitchen jail", as my husband and I are calling it. We have left her many puppy ammenities like chew toys, a bed, food and water; so she is only lacking wide open house space. She wasn't the happiest dog in the world when we left, but she wasn't totally miserable looking either (like when we used the crate when she was younger). She usually sees the kitchen as a place of good smells and occasional bits of scrambled egg that come her way.

Thanks for the info on not being able to trust her for the first year. That helps me know that she can grow out of this. My husband felt so bad about crating her that he really wanted to let her have the run of the house once she was housebroken. We will all three learn and grow hopefully.

[elleng]

5. You will learn, and so will she, A LOT!

One of the SMARTEST breeds, and surely knows diff btw good and bad/right and wrong! Watch the dog show, whats his name, will help a lot! Have a ball!!!

[MiniMe]

6. Sounds like you are doing the right thing

They want to please you and do the right thing, but if you aren't watching at this age, sometimes they just can't help themselves. The breed doesn't really matter, but some breeds are bigger chewers than others, but puppies are puppies. I do foster for a rescue, and I have lost my guilt about crating a dog, it is for their own (and my house's) protection. Somehow, I have had pups since May, different groups of them. They are always penned or contained in one way or another. She will grow out of it.

[MadMaddie]

2. So my fellow dog owner it is time for pen training for

little active Layla.

We have two dogs Max and Maddie. We have a metal pen and also a portable pen set up in the house. They willingly go into the pen if they want to take a nap.All we say is "Pen Up" and off they go.

You have to make it into a safe place for her, favorite blankets etc. When we trained them we used treats to entice them in and left the door open (this is during time when we are home). Get her acclimated to the pen over a week or so before you leave for longer periods of time. When you get into your routine, when you go home at lunch you can break the monotony of the pen. If you have a large yard you could also build a fenced run on one side of the yard. You could have a nice dog house for Layla there too.

We also have portable pens in case of emergencies and we have to leave the house or area.

Here are examples of crates.

http://www.digitpet.com/category.cfm?cid=1001,2003

Sometimes they get fixated on items because of boredom and in your case the chair is new.

Good Luck! Layla will be fine! Your arm chair not so much!
Good Luck!:hi:

[get the red out]

4. We were using a crate for a while

We have a wonderful big crate that we were using, we replaced our initial vinyl crate (which Layla liked but chewed her way out of) with a nice big plastic one that she really never liked much. Unfortunately my husband went in the hospital right after the crate change and I didn't have a partner for puppy crate breaks and didn't have time to slowly get her used to it. We used it every day until she was pretty reliable with her housebreaking then let her out. Today we have her in our small kitchen blocked in by a baby gate (she doesn't like to get too close to baby gates so I believe she will stay put). She has numerous toys, food, water, a blanket and a dog bed. She won't like it as well as the whole house, but I feel like she will be happier than in the crate (because of us and our poor training, not her).

The pen idea sounds good also. I believe a friend of mine mentioned using one with her Lab as a puppy. She said she couldn't trust her at all for quite some time.

I think you are right, Layla got fixated on the new chair and decided it was a big chew toy.

[TorchTheWitch]

7. lock the chair away from the dog

instead of locking the dog away from the chair. That is, if the leather chair is the only thing she's interested in chewing up. If the chair isn't so damaged that you want to keep it, and the dog has behaved except for this one chair it would be a hell of a lot easier to just put the chair in a room that the dog can be locked out of when no one is in there to supervise her.

Leather and real fur like a sheep skin are the most tempting of items most dogs want to chew because they were once animals, and the dog knows it. Giving rawhide treats is a bad idea as it just encourages that chewing skin is ok... after all, rawhide treats and leather are much the same thing to a dog. Rawhide treats are probably the dumbest idea anyone ever came up with... it just teaches the dog that eating animal skin is a good thing. It's the animal skin scent that attracts them, so the dog isn't seeing a difference between a rawhide chew and leather shoes or coats or furniture or fur. And frankly, they aren't very healthy for dogs. Vets discourage giving rawhide to a dog because they can be downright dangerous. Rawhide isn't digested, which means however large the pieces are that are swallowed must be eliminated, and that can cause intestinal blockage. Dogs don't thoroughly chew their food... they only break it up into pieces that can be swallowed, and it's their digestive system that does most of the food breakdown. Sharp edges when swallowed can also cause esophagus and stomach lining tears. Rawhide chews mostly come from China, Thailand and other countries not particular about what they treat them with, and many have been found to use insecticides and even arsenic as a preservative.

A much better alternative to rawhide is raw pigs feet or ox knuckle bones provided the feet or bone is larger than the dog's mouth.

Unfortunately, the chili powder and vaseline treatment doesn't work for leather because it will stain although it works really well for keeping a dog from chewing wood or metal furniture, doorknobs, baseboards, etc. I wouldn't trust any kind of spray like bitter apple either since it will probably also stain (hell, just plain water will stain leather).

Can the chair be repaired? I know they make vinyl fix-it kits that work extremely well that I've used myself, but I don't know if they also work for leather or if they make the same kind of kit for especially for leather, but I image that such a thing would exist. If the damage isn't extensive, I'd look into that. It's a bit tricky to use, so if you go this route you might want to practice a little on some old leather scraps first to get the hang of it.

Buying a leather chair with a pup in the teething stage probably wasn't the brightest of ideas, huh? Ah, well. These things do happen.

[get the red out]

8. I agree, not bright to get that chair!

My husband got a wild hair when he saw the chair on sale. Oh well.

I only recently started finding out about the dangers of raw hide chews (what I get for just expecting everything sold in the big chain pet stores to be safe and good for her). I have cut down on them lately and I will cut them out completely now that I know even more. Scary stuff, I made sure to check with dog people about which puppy food to buy but didn't think twice about things like raw hide. I bought a beef knee bone and another bone filled with soft dog treat at Incredipet a couple of weeks ago and she seems to love those even more than the raw hides.

[TorchTheWitch]

9. SALE!!! Wow, that's so me. LOL!

Ah, the impossible to resist lure of something on sale! I swear I'd buy snowballs in July if they were 50% off.

Beware of the knuckle bones a feet that are treated on the outside with yummy gravy tasting substance. Doggies love them, but when it mixes with their saliva you end up with a big brown stain on your carpet. UGH! Thank the gods for OxyClean though... worked like a charm.

[get the red out]

12. That's my husband

"Guess how much I paid for this." is his favorite sentence.

[jtuck004]

10. You have a border collie mix. That means you have adopted

some small portion of the energy of a tornado ;)

You need to get this dog a job, or she will invent one every day. That's not a bad thing, it is just a fact.

You should probably get a crate, wire, and get her used to it, 'cause it sounds like you may have to be gone a bit, and unless you can create a room for her that you don't mind her chewing her way out of (actually had a border collie chew through the sheetrock of a garage, was waiting in the living room for the owner to come home "I'm warmed up now. Want to play?").

You probaly should not rely on it a bunch, 'cause it is really hard for BC's to be locked up. They live to work.

Great, great dogs, but they need long, long walks and lots of ways to expend border collie energy, which is much more intense than the energy from many other dogs.

Those Galileo bones from Petsmart might be a good idea as well (they may make a smaller one, not sure).

Sounds like a great pup...

[get the red out]

11. What does a "job" mean?

I keep reading about giving them a job but I’m not sure what that really means. I have her in intermediate dog training, she’s completed puppy training. And a “job” I really want her to embrace is going for a nice long exercise walk with me every morning (and many evenings). I have wanted so long to have a beautiful, sweet dog to accompany me when I exercise. My husband has been ill, but he is improving and I am hoping he will want to walk her sometimes also when I am not around (he’s not into exercise and I’m just the opposite).

But if anyone can illustrate what giving a dog a job means that would help, I’m a novice. She’s a great dog, she seems to have taken on napping with my hubby when he isn’t feeling well also. She’s also the one dog greeting committee for our section of the condo complex, when I am playing ball with her and a neighbor comes home she will run up to them wagging her whole butt then continue back to me with her ball. She definitely feels that greeting everyone is her job, and they all love her (except for the owners of the mean little white dog that tries to bite everything that moves).

[jtuck004]

13. Going back to just the past few hundreds of years of

dog history a lot of their development was in the context of what kind of work they could do for people. Labs are strong with short hair that sheds water well so they could be used in water. Bloodhounds were used to track and sometimes kill people. Danes were attack dogs (not like the couch potatoes we see today :). The terriers that many people mis-label as "pit bulls" were used as child guardians and companions for their extreme allegiance to people.

Dogs have continued to adapt to changing conditions. Many are mere shadows of their ancestors, more-or-less keeping the "look", but having had a lot of the spirit bred (whether intentionally or unintentionally) out of them. This has had the effect of making them more manageable, both in temperament and size, in the urban setting.

The Border Collie was developed to herd. All day long, running what would add up to miles at a time in short fast bursts, under the control of the shepherd. Perhaps one of the smartest of dogs, herding requires them to think. The shepherd directs them, but they have to keep an eye on the animal they are herding, watch for stragglers, push them just hard enough but not too hard to make them run off. Once they learn the task they often make decisions more or less on their own. The instinct is so strong that even untrained border collies are often seen to "herd" their owners into the area where they are fed if the person who gets their food forgets. And they just don't quit. I was at a vet hospital one day when a rancher walked in with his BC in his arms. The dog had run into a steel bar sticking out of a fence which punched a hole in his chest. The dog pulled himself loose, and went back at trying to herd the cows into a pen. The guy had to pick him up and hold him to take him to the truck. The dog, as it turns out, had punched a hole in his lung, but that wasn't going to stop him from working.

That is how amazing your dog is.

Despite the breeding, to take such a dog and move it into an urban environment with no outlet for all that energy results in the dog creating his or her own "work". Pulling all that unnecessary leather off the big chair, jumping the fence and running through the neighborhood, removing all the pictures from the walls, taking all that fun stuffing out of the couch.

By taking on this kind of dog you have given yourself the task of making sure she has an outlet for all that energy. Your walks are excellent. Slowly riding a bike, in cool weather, can help speed up the pace. Tennis ball throwing in a closed area like a baseball diamond can go on for a long-long time give the dog an outlet. (They have these plastic arms at pet stores that will throw the ball further, gives the dog more of a workout). Your decision to take her to obedience training is great - that gives her a chance to see the world as well as other people and dogs, to use her intelligence, and some exercise. After you get some control, you might think about "agility". Running the hoops, jumps, and zigzag - that takes a bit of thinking as well, so it is a pretty popular task for them. I have seen more than one early in the process finish a run, then walk away from the owner and go do it again.

People routinely underestimate the amount of exercise these dogs want, and it results in a lot of damage as well some dogs winding up in the shelter. The owner invariably talks about how things were torn up, how the dog ran away, how he "nipped" at people - every one of these are behaviors that could have been channeled into herding or agility.

There are also people who gather, often in competitions, where they herd animals with their dogs for sport. Sheep are often used for working dogs, but one that has popped up in the past few years is herding ducks. They have to move them down one side of a pen, around a gate, and into a pen. The ducks are not hurt, the dog gets to do work similar to what her ancestors did, and you get to meet new people with common interests. And it's a little less work on the human than agility competitions.

We do some rescue and adoption work so I have had a variety of dogs over the years, and one of these was Barney, a border collie. He was the one that chewed through the living room wall at a potential adopter, (that was somewhat of a deal-killer for her), so he came back home to me and stayed until I had to take him to the vet and hold him as we said goodbye 14 years later. He taught me a lot about BC's, and I still miss him.

You are very lucky to have this girl, and she is lucky to have someone that takes her needs into consideration.

Does that help?