Our dog has started chewing the door. How do we stop him?

Potis 2020

We have a 3 year old rescue collie (we have him for 2 years). Don't let the breed fool you - he's a bit of a dummy (a lovable dummy, but a dummy nonetheless)! My partner always says that when he gets excited, the brain 'switch' goes off, and the 'excitement switch' turns on. An extremely accurate description.

When we rescued him he was very nervous of everything - loud noises, getting a collar on, if you accidentally raised your voice but after two weeks really he settled in so well. It still doesn't take a lot to spook him but he recovers a lot quicker than he used to.

He is very attached to us and with us both working from home we have made a conscious effort to try and keep away for periods during the day so he doesn't become overly clingy. We both have our office upstairs and he is in the garden if it's dry outside. He never cries or whines but if you peek out the back bedroom window he watches the back of the house like a hawk for any signs of movement. However, you can still catch him unawares and he is happy running around with a toy or lying down with the cat.

From day one he slept in our garage which is attached to the side of the kitchen. Our pet cat sleeps in with him. For the first few nights he whined a bit, but in over two years there has been nothing. He is perfectly happy going to bed and has never had an accident or damaged anything. That is until last week. My partner went to Cork to spend time with her family. He was grand the first two nights but on the third I went to let him out and there was bits of shredded timber from the door on the floor. I didn't say anything to him and just assumed he needed to pee or something had spooked him during the night.

The next morning as I was walking downstairs I heard him scratching and ran to the door to tell him to stop and scold him. He stopped but was so excited to see me that he didn't even register my annoyance. My partner returned last Sunday and he is continuing this behavior. Unfortunately we haven't managed to catch him in the act since and he has scratched the door every morning (we think he does it when he hears us stirring as the floor is still wet with patches of drool when we get to him).

We taped tinfoil to the inside of the door to see if that would deter him as we thought he wouldn't like the noise. It didn't stop him. Last night we squeezed lemon juice all over some cardboard and sprinkled it with a heavy dose of black pepper to see if that would put him off. It was shredded again this morning.

We are at our wits end and can't understand how after two years this has now become an issue.

We are considering buying a cheap 2-way baby monitor to place in the garage so when we hear him start that we can tell him to stop. Does anyone have any other suggestions? Does anyone have any theories as to why he might have started this odd behavior?

VonVix

https://boards.ie/discussion/2058195973/our-dog-has-started-chewing-the-door-how-do-we-stop-him

A few things...

"The next morning as I was walking downstairs I heard him scratching and ran to the door to tell him to stop and scold him. He stopped but was so excited to see me that he didn't even register my annoyance."

Attention is still attention, despite the energy coming from it. He got you to come to him. That's likely what he needed at the time.

"we think he does it when he hears us stirring as the floor is still wet with patches of drool when we get to him"

Drooling in this instance can be a symptom of anxiety. Dogs naturally do not want to be away from the family unit. Even if he appeared totally fine all this time, sometimes a dog has to learn something once to realize "hey, I like this!"

Dogs at the age of 2-3 years start to come into their own, they will have higher preference for their familiar people/animals. Younger dogs (6 months-2 years) can often be a wee bit more independent, of course all this can vary from dog to dog, but this is my experience having worked with many peoples puppies who turned into adults and seeing the change over time. It is largely unnatural for dogs to be away from their human a large percent of the time (with the exception of livestock guardian breeds, etc) instead of trying to get him to stop this unwanted behaviour, have you tried preventing it from happening, i.e. having him inside, providing enrichment toys from him, giving him things he is allowed to shred?

sillysmiles

From your post it sounds as though the dog is outside alone during the day and then outside alone at night. How much time does your dog actually spend in your company, just sleeping, relaxing? Not necessarily directly interacting/playing but just being?

Do you think working from home will be a long term thing?

It sounds like your dog is telling you he is anxious and doesn't like being alone in the garage?

IMO you can fight it and everyone is miserable or work out a compromise!

Potis 2020

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117710097#Comment_117710097

Thanks for your reply. Just by way of update, he has stopped chewing the door and hasn't done it for a few weeks. We left the offending door open a few nights and that seemed to do the trick thankfully!

We spend a fair bit of time with our dog. As we're working from home at the moment, we spend a lot of time with him (we walk him at lunch an after work and once dinner time comes, he is inside with us until bedtime). We also bring him with us when visiting family down the country and we recently purchased a campervan so he comes on our holidays too :) I actually wonder if that is what started the behaviour. We had been away in the camper a lot and he got used to 'sleeping' with us. He's a very affectionate chap and loves being in our company.

We have tried weaning him off constant interaction the past few months as the reality is (unfortunately) that we will probably have to return to the office, at least part time. We are hoping we can stagger our days WFH to minimise the chance of him being left any day completely on his own.