Guinness is so naughty i'm really annoyed!

Guinness is the youngest of my cavy family and the cheekiest / naughtest!

He has always got up to mischief like the time he chewed through my Sony Laptop cable so i couldnt use it for a week until i brought a new cable costing £80!! Or the time he found my brand new £59 shoes that i had only worn once which he was caught chewing to pieces! He also loves to climb, if you leave a dinning room chair pulled out he will jump onto that and then up onto the dinning room table or up onto window cills etc etc

This time he has broken the record....

I came down the stairs to find him chewing my leather sofa!!!! Right in the middle, he had ripped a hole the size of a coffee mug and pulled all the fluff out!!!

I was so upset, the hole is too big to try and pull together to sew, and its right on the edge so i cannot hide it with pillows. The sofa cost me nearly £3000 a year ago....

I dont understand why after nearly a year with us he has suddenly decided to chew the sofa - he never has before. I keep a large varity of toys for the dogs to play with.... I was only upstairs doing my spring clean, so its not like he was left alone as such

You're not going to want to read this, but I'll say it anyways.

Rather than blame Guinness, look in the mirror. Dogs who have a tendency to chew need to be managed. Who left the shoes within his reach? Who left the chair pulled out? Who didn't monitor him while he chewed the couch?

He needs to be confined to a safe area when you can't keep an eye on him. Put up baby gates in the kitchen for example. Or use an x-pen. His health and safety is just as important as your peace of mind.

Oh no I'd be devastated . I have never heard of a Cav becoming this destructive before. How old is Guinness now? Maybe a stuffed kong or a treatball will keep him busy in a confined area when you need to do your cleaning. Also plenty of long walks and energetic play to tire him out to make him sleep in the house. Hope you manage to sort this out

He was behind his babygate in the conservatory with all his toys - there is nothing in that room that he can hurt or be hurt from - the only other stuff in that room apart from his toys and bed are the sofa and two chairs - where i often sit most and cuddle up with the boys watching the world go by.... I only put the sofa in there before christmas as he had never chewed furniture before and it is my favorite room to sit and the safest room as there are not cables or tv's etc.

I could take the furniture out but then what would i sit on - i cannot shut him in the kitchen as its such a tiny room i dont think that would be fair as the boys wouldnt have room to play.

When i say that i am annoyed i mean that i am annoyed with the situation - i did not scold him for doing this as you say it was me that left the shoes out and it was me that put the sofa in the conservatory but short of ridding my house of furniture, occasionally i do have to trust him. Perhaps i have become complacent as i do not have this issue with Harvey.

Oh Harvey, you poor thing. Who would have thought he'd chew the couch. Do you have any insurance for it? I know when we bought our suite of furniture from Reids two years ago, there was a 5 year insurance policy added which included damage caused by pets.

Well Harvey we have a similar (yet no so bad) case of this.. our Qwebble, turning 2 in July, started chewing things again 2 weeks ago.. my bf and I both have shoes to work in the garden or take the dogs on potty break.. for over a year those shoes are in their room as well.. now 2 weeks ago I got home from work and the little misses decided she needed to chew on those shoes..

I have no clue where that behaviour comes from but for now we make sure (at least we try to) that she has nothing to chew on except for the things she's allowed to chew on (read bones and stuff).. David even gave her a toy last week to destroy..
Cause believe it or not.. give her a fluffy or soft toy and it'll be destroyed within the day, it's unbelievable how she manages to destroy most of her toys...

So I hope you find a way to correct the behaviour, we try several things, but most importantly we make sure she can't destroy anything we don't want destroyed

Good luck!

Oh Dear, that's upsetting!
Firstly the couch.Sometimes leather can be repaired, the panel can be taken out and reupholstered, hopefully at only a year old the leather may not have aged too much so it can be matched colourwise.If not try your house insurance.
Daisy ate her way through at least eight pairs of my shoes.Totally my own fault for leaving them unattended or leaving my shoe cupboard door open.
She also ate the corners off my coffee table and the edges of skirting board,not something I had anticipated!
The solution in our case was to have my husband take her for a brisk 45 min walk through the woods every morning, them she came home, had her breakfast and slept in her basket for four hours, then I come home from work and giver her ball chasing for 20 mins.She's now a tired and happy girl with lovely muscle tone and no tendency to boredom and chewing.
It's a mistake to assume that cavaliers are happy couch potatoes,if bored they're agents of mass destruction.( I have a can of antichew spray with a tri cav on the tin)My leather recliner has been clawed by her begging for her dinner but when we have pets we need to be realistic and accept that anything with teeth and nails can damage furniture.
However if it's any consolation I'd happily swap your Guinness for my two kids!!!!
Sins

So sorry to hear that! I would have just cried! I'm sure you've been watching her closely, but none of us are perfect and sometimes these things happen despite our best efforts. My dh would have gone through the roof, and I would definitely have broken down crying.

Hopefully this is the last big, expensive thing she will destroy and 5 years from now, you will look back on this and laugh about how naughty she was! You definitely have a story to tell on her anyway!

I really hope the cushion can be repaired. Like Sins said, someone can probably replace that one big piece of leather with a new piece and it will be good as new. Good luck! :xfngr: You'll have to start an account on her and keep a tally of all the things she has destroyed. Or maybe not...

You'll have to start an account on her and keep a tally of all the things she has destroyed.

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My husband does that and frequently reminds me! He currently estimates the cost of 13 months of cavalier ownership at €2,955 excluding food .
icon_whistling

About eight years ago we splashed out and bought two Natuzzi leather sofas. Our Rudee was about six/seven then and she didn't like the leather and chose to lie on a duvet on the floor instead and when our neighbours dog Beauty came in for a visit , she too would lie on the floor so our sofas were safe, or so I thought. One day Beauty came in and I gave her a treat to chew on. I was putting away the shopping when suddenly I got this feeling that something was not quite right; it was very quiet I ran in to the lounge to discover Beauty standing on one of the sofas, digging into the leather to try and bury her chew Well, I let such a yell out of me !! Beauty jumped off the sofa but by then the damage had been done. Thankfully we just have track marks where she tried to dig but only scuffed the leather. I couldn't fight with her because it was MY FAULT ENTIRELY. I assumed that she had the same manners as Rudee- BIG MISTAKE.
All animals are different.Only lately I've seen Minnie size up the TV cabinet and one part of me is delighted that she feels so content that she's relaxed enough to want to chew the furniture but I know now that she is ready to play so I've given her and Cara a stuffed kong each and they are learning how to get fun out of them and chew on them without being reprimanded PLUS they get food out of them as well and my furniture stays safe...for now :xfngr:

I had not thought about insurance????

I will have to dig out the paperwork on the sofa and on the house insurance - not sure if either will cover pet damage but its worth a look!!!

I went out at lunchtime today and brought a whole lot more toys for the boys to play with and chew up - i thought perhaps he had got bored of the toys he already has.... more money

However if it's any consolation I'd happily swap your Guinness for my two kids!!!!

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:rotfl:

generally offering lots of toys isn;t a good approach -- like kids if they have them all, all the time, they just get bored with them all. Most dogs quickly grow bored with a new toy and 90% of toys usually lie there never used. It is much better to never let the dog have more than 2-3 toys at most, for maybe a week at a time, then put those away and bring out some new ones and rotate them around. Also a good idea to have a couple of toys that never come out except when it is time to play with you.

Basically destruction is part of dog ownership -- something, somewhere is going to be done and dusted when they are puppies... if we are lucky they lose the interest in chewing things we don't want chewed by adulthood but it all depends. If a dog has been given leather to chew on then a sofa is little more than a giant chew toy. Bitter repellant sprays can help. The best approach is always avoiding the situation in the first place -- eg don't trust the dog alone near anything you value.

Most often destructive chewing is simply related to boredom. Better than giving a dog more toys though to solve this is to *do something WITH the dog*, every day, for at least 30 minutes of vigorous exercise and better to be an hour. Most dogs do not get nearly enough exercise and burn up that bottled up energy by chewing often on something new, like a shoe or piece of furniture. Also they should get a least 15 minutes of obedience practice a day as mental exercise also wears out a dog (and a person! Think of taking a test). Both these activities make the dog happy because it does what it most enjoys -- bond with you. A TIRED content dog does not chew -- it sleeps. This is one area where I do totally agree with Cesar Milan -- dogs are active animals and really need daily exercise of at least ONE HOUR active playing, walking, agility etc. If they don't get enough exercise -- that's where the behaviour issues start.

Well last night I came home from work and I started throwing away a ball for Qwebble.. I kept throwing it away untill she gave up (I guess about 30-40 times) then went inside to prepare dinner..

When David got home she seemed to be fully rested again (like 15mins after we came back in the house) so after dinner back outside throwing balls again until she gave up..

Not much change during the evening though and this morning she was jumping as high as usual.. But I'm determined not to give up and if it's not raining tonight, she can get outside again and run for that ball until she gives up again

I've been thinking about taking up obedience with her again but she is David's dog since it was his birthday present so I feel a bit uncomfortable to do obedience with her cause I'm afraid she'll start to see me as her boss... Not sure if agility will do the same though..