Daisy's Mom
Well-known member
As some of you know from my topic in the Introduce Yourself area, I just got a 10 week old Cavalier puppy this past weekend. She is a love, and we can tell she is very smart. The worst behavior problem we have encountered isn't house accidents. She's only had about 4 of those this week in total, and all of them were completely our fault. 2 of the 4 were at the same time -- all of us were out on a bike ride around the neighborhood and my 7 year old son got back first by a few minutes. He let Daisy out of her crate without taking her outside and of course she immediately peed on the floor and pooped in another place, too. I was very distraught as we had already had 2 perfect accident-free days prior to that. It felt like all my hard work and care of the prior 4 days had been undone. She has also been really great about the crate. Maybe 2 minutes of whining in the crate max the entire week! She has even crawled in there herself some times to take a nap. We've taught her to sit and lay down pretty reliably, too!
OK, enough bragging about our prodigy. Now for the bad news -- she chews on EVERYTHING!!! She chews on our fingers, toes, socks, the couch, the leather chair, clothing, my daughter's and my hair, ears, my daughter's nightgown hem, my jeans hem, mulch, bugs, you name it. She has bitten my toes so hard that she's almost drawn blood! She has actually clamped down on my big toe and done the "death-shake!" She is especially enraged by white socks! We've tried distraction, putting her down and ignoring her, screaming out in pain to startle her, and I'm sad to say even yelling at her. We have to continually pry her mouth off our body parts. We just cannot have her doing this to people! My kids are starting to run screaming from her and jumping on the couch to protect themselves when she is in one of her moods! Other times, she is just the perfect angel, snuggling and licking your fingers.
Help me, please! I have read never to put her in the crate as punishment because you don't want her to view it as imprisonment, but a couple of times, I've felt I had no choice, just for the sake of self-preservation. In case this is pertinent to your advice, up until now, she's in the crate at night, and mostly only in it in the daytime by her own choice or when no one is home. I have the summer off, and I have stayed home with her every day and she has plenty of attention from me and our 2 kids, who love her, but view her as the Tasmanian devil about half the time.
The chewing is all in good fun to her, but especially given that we have kids and they have kid-friends, we have to figure out how to refocus her. We've gotten her lots of toys, which she will chew on occasionally, but nothing is as fun to chew as humans and furniture.
OK, enough bragging about our prodigy. Now for the bad news -- she chews on EVERYTHING!!! She chews on our fingers, toes, socks, the couch, the leather chair, clothing, my daughter's and my hair, ears, my daughter's nightgown hem, my jeans hem, mulch, bugs, you name it. She has bitten my toes so hard that she's almost drawn blood! She has actually clamped down on my big toe and done the "death-shake!" She is especially enraged by white socks! We've tried distraction, putting her down and ignoring her, screaming out in pain to startle her, and I'm sad to say even yelling at her. We have to continually pry her mouth off our body parts. We just cannot have her doing this to people! My kids are starting to run screaming from her and jumping on the couch to protect themselves when she is in one of her moods! Other times, she is just the perfect angel, snuggling and licking your fingers.
Help me, please! I have read never to put her in the crate as punishment because you don't want her to view it as imprisonment, but a couple of times, I've felt I had no choice, just for the sake of self-preservation. In case this is pertinent to your advice, up until now, she's in the crate at night, and mostly only in it in the daytime by her own choice or when no one is home. I have the summer off, and I have stayed home with her every day and she has plenty of attention from me and our 2 kids, who love her, but view her as the Tasmanian devil about half the time.
The chewing is all in good fun to her, but especially given that we have kids and they have kid-friends, we have to figure out how to refocus her. We've gotten her lots of toys, which she will chew on occasionally, but nothing is as fun to chew as humans and furniture.