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Suddenly Destroying Crate

Behavioral Issues
  • it seems like Saavik has developed some separation anxiety with her crate… She has been fine up until this point and accustomed to her routine during the week. We have only had her about a month but everything was going smoothly til Thursday Zack was home with her most of the day, and he put her in the crate around 2:30PM. Normally she wines for 10 minutes and settles down.. I got home at 5:30 and she had pushed her tray out of the crate and destroyed her blanket. The vet said she may have some mild anxiety and gave me an all natural med in the form of a chicken liver dog treat..No issues on friday... Saturday gave her the dog treat which she was on day 3 of at that point... put her in the crate and went to the gym for literally 1 hour returned and found she had started chewing the plastic tray!!! Sunday same thing gone to gym for one hour and she had destroyed the plastic tray... she was put back in the crate a few hours later while we left for some errands...when we came back she was fine no chewing of her new blanket etc... We are going to invest in a metal crate tray and hope that will stop the destruction... She is perfect when out of the crate with the exception of being one nosy basenji!!! she sleeps in the bed with us all night... So I don't think she is getting too much crate time

  • What besides the blanket/tray is in the crate for her to chew on/play with? And before putting her in the crate, do you play with her to tire her out? And have you tried a kong filled with goodies to keep her busy?

  • She has a Kong and a chewy squeaker in there with her… Most of the time she has is tired out by the time we put her in there... It's weird b/c all of the times we've had incidents she had plenty of play time before the crate... our weekly morning routine is that i feed her and take her our before work and she gets back in bed with zack and sleeps another hour or so before he goes to work... She never chews anything during this type of routine... Seems to be happening on weekends on days off from work.

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