My dog hates to be alone. if i leave he chews off all the zippers off of anything he can find. then sometimes he poops on the floor. after he has been alone for 20 min+ he starts barking and howling. i have tryed waiting outside the door and rewarding him if he is quiet but it doesnt work because he doesnt bark for 20+ min and i dont have enough patience and most of the 20 min he is chewing up zippers. i cant hide all of the zippers because he we live in a trailor and he goes into every room and every room has zippers. there are just to many zippers!! i cant confine him to one area because he is able to jump over any barriers we put up and once again we live in a very small trailor and every room is tiny and has zippers. He gets plenty of excersise each day and has lots of toys to chew on. he does chew on other items in our trailor when we are home though. last night i cought him chewing on my blanket after moving his toy out of the way. anything that is chewable is chewed on. i have tryed correcting him by telling him no and replacing whatever he is chewing on with a toy but he just doesnt get it. most of the time he chews on his toys though. i cant leave him alone but i have to! i dont know what to do!

I can't think of anything but call a pet store or a dog trainer. I would recomend calling a local dog trainer or petsmart's dog training people.

do you have a dog kennel? one small enough he can lay in, and not have room to poop or pee in. i've heard that dogs feel insecure and don't know what to do with themselves if they are left alone to roam the house. A kennel makes them feel secure, as long as he isn't in it for extended time frames, it is probably more comforting for the dog. this worked with my Gustav and he only has accidents every now and again. hardly ever. i never put him in the kennel at night, he sleeps with me. I think it is a great feeling for him to sleep with the "pack".

we dont have anything like that where we live. the closest civilization is 300 miles away. i live in a very small town.

order a kennel off the internet

i have a kennel but he hates it. i ment i dont have any pet trainers or anything in my town.

My dog also had separation anxiety. If this is what your dog has, I’m not sure if a kennel will fix your problem. It will, however, confine her. My dog destroyed 2 kennels and 4 teeth. We took her to several vets, put her on medication twice a day, and went through an extensive desensitization process. I’m very interested in the advice you get on this. Our dog is currently relapsing after almost a year. She is getting bad fast… fine sometimes when we leave and other times destroying the room and hurting herself. She’s even now having troubles making it through the night and has begun creeping into my room at night in a very anxious state. Has anyone truly cured a dog of separation anxiety?

My dog also has separation anxiety. I recently left my husband and had nowhere to go but a friends house. My friend could not have pets so I had to leave Grizzly with my mom for a couple of months. We still cannot have pets in our apartment, but we brought Grizzly home because I couldn't take it anymore. He cries when I leave the apartment (problem since people can't know he is here) so I have to take him with me. When he was younger I put him in his kennel with a couple of toys. He would cry for a little while, but after a big he realized that it wasn't doing him any good. The only thing he could chew on was his toys. If I left him out of his kennel while I was gone he would chew on things that were mine because he was upset. If I caught him chewing on somethig he wasn't supposed to, I let him smell it and then tapped him on the nose. As far as the pooping. It has been proven that putting a dog in his kennel helps with potty training. If you put him in a kennel, he will quit pooping in there because it is in his living space. Dogs learn not to poop and pee in their living space. You may also try putting him in the bathroom where he has room and putting up anything he may chew on and putting the trash outside the bathroom until you get home.

Thanks for your reply. Have you been able to cure your dog of the separation anxiety? I’m not sure about your bathroom suggestion. When our dog first went through this we tried putting her in an empty bathroom we were remodeling thinking that a little more space might help. That evening we came home to a bloody mess. She had jumped up and broke the ceiling light bulb which then cut her paws. The sheetrock, window sills, and door were shred and covered with her blood. With respect to the excrement, I’ve noticed that it is a different consistency than her normal feces. When we tried leaving her in the crate she would actually excrement in the kennel sometimes. I think the severe anxiousness is causing the defecation and not because she isn’t trained. Our dog is a great dog normally.