Hello. New to this forum and I'm glad I ran across it. So far I've seen a lot of good advice and can tell that there are a lot of dog lovers out there that might be able to help us out.
We rescued Casey from the pound. Casey is a border-collie / cocker spaniel mix and about 1 year old. We've had him for about 5 months and love this dog to death. Recently we added another puppy to the family which is a 3 month old and they are the best of friends.
We crate trained Casey. He goes into the crate every night for bed and loves it. When we leave the house he normally stays in the crate. We tried to leave him alone in the yard when we left the house and that's when bad things started to happen.
When leaving Casey outside he digs holes and has a sprinkler fetish. He also likes to eat my roses. Casey likes to pull out the drip lines to my sprinkler system. This is a tremendous pain in the you know what. I just installed these things and I have had to re-install the lines numerous times. It happens when we are not home mostly. Well, when he does this he knows he's done something wrong because I take him to the sprinkler and holes and say "NO" and he seems to get it. I've caught him in the act a few times to and say "NO" and he knows that this is a bad deal. I also know it's not the new puppy doing these things because Casey started this before the puppy was around.
Well, we used some of the "Dog Away" smelly stuff on the drip lines and that seemed to be a cure. No ripped up sprinklers for a week. We had plans to leave the house for many hours and didn't want to coop them up in the crates so we hesitantly let them stay outside with free roam to the inside via doggie-door. This was a trial run. Well, it didn't work. Casey ripped out about 5 drip lines that I had recently installed. These lines are hard to find...buried under gravel and only a tiny end piece is exposed. He found them. He also ate the plants a had just installed and somehow got up on top of my new desk. The desk is a soft wood and is now destroyed from claw marks. How the hell he got up there I have no idea. Why he got up there? No clue...baffled. This trial run went very bad. More sprinkler lines to replace and a $1,000 desk destroyed.
I don't know what to do. I don't want to be that guy that leaves the dog to a dog run on the side yard when I leave. I don't want to have to put him in a crate every time either. I've had many dogs and never had to crate them for behavior issues like this. They just didn't destroy anything.
I don't want to give up on Casey and just need to find a solution to this separation anxiety he has. After three weeks of sprinkler repair though....I'm getting very frustrated. I feel I have to have an eye on him at ALL times and can NEVER leave him alone again unless he's in a crate. I just don't think it's right to crate a dog so frequently though. That's why I'm writing this. I just don't know what to do.
Can anybody help me with crazy Casey?
We rescued Casey from the pound. Casey is a border-collie / cocker spaniel mix and about 1 year old. We've had him for about 5 months and love this dog to death. Recently we added another puppy to the family which is a 3 month old and they are the best of friends.
We crate trained Casey. He goes into the crate every night for bed and loves it. When we leave the house he normally stays in the crate. We tried to leave him alone in the yard when we left the house and that's when bad things started to happen.
When leaving Casey outside he digs holes and has a sprinkler fetish. He also likes to eat my roses. Casey likes to pull out the drip lines to my sprinkler system. This is a tremendous pain in the you know what. I just installed these things and I have had to re-install the lines numerous times. It happens when we are not home mostly. Well, when he does this he knows he's done something wrong because I take him to the sprinkler and holes and say "NO" and he seems to get it. I've caught him in the act a few times to and say "NO" and he knows that this is a bad deal. I also know it's not the new puppy doing these things because Casey started this before the puppy was around.
Well, we used some of the "Dog Away" smelly stuff on the drip lines and that seemed to be a cure. No ripped up sprinklers for a week. We had plans to leave the house for many hours and didn't want to coop them up in the crates so we hesitantly let them stay outside with free roam to the inside via doggie-door. This was a trial run. Well, it didn't work. Casey ripped out about 5 drip lines that I had recently installed. These lines are hard to find...buried under gravel and only a tiny end piece is exposed. He found them. He also ate the plants a had just installed and somehow got up on top of my new desk. The desk is a soft wood and is now destroyed from claw marks. How the hell he got up there I have no idea. Why he got up there? No clue...baffled. This trial run went very bad. More sprinkler lines to replace and a $1,000 desk destroyed.
I don't know what to do. I don't want to be that guy that leaves the dog to a dog run on the side yard when I leave. I don't want to have to put him in a crate every time either. I've had many dogs and never had to crate them for behavior issues like this. They just didn't destroy anything.
I don't want to give up on Casey and just need to find a solution to this separation anxiety he has. After three weeks of sprinkler repair though....I'm getting very frustrated. I feel I have to have an eye on him at ALL times and can NEVER leave him alone again unless he's in a crate. I just don't think it's right to crate a dog so frequently though. That's why I'm writing this. I just don't know what to do.
Can anybody help me with crazy Casey?