help, i am tearing my hair out…felakuti is chewing every dog bed, every blanket i give him...shredding them to peices and pulling out the stuffing and eating it. he is 9 months old now, too old for this...i have tried putting bitter apple on stuff, tried everything i can think of and now it's getting cold at night. isnt there some space age material that is warm and cozy that dogs cant shred? sigh
Good luck with that one.
It has nothing to do with his age, but with the fact that he's a shredder.
I think, and this is just based on my own experience with Jazzy and Keoki,
a shredder is a shredder.
Jazzy has had the same blanket and dog pillow in her crate for a very long time. She has never shredded a blanket of any kind, not even when she was a puppy.
Keoki is 8 mos old. I have spent more money on bedding for him than I care to calculate.
He does okay now with his "night time bed", but I go through a ridiculous ritual to make sure he's asleep at night before I go to bed. {I give him tiny treats through the door of the crate, then quietly tell him "go to bed" over and over until he finally curls up and goes to sleep. I stay for several minutes until I hear his breathing change, then sneak out of the room}. As soon as I hear him move in his crate in the morning, I get up and take him out, so I don't give him time to start tearing it up. And the little **** gets up between 5 and 6 every day, so there's no more sleeping in for me!
Sometimes, during the days at home, he will run into his crate and pull his bedding out to play with. I have to be on top of that, grab the stuff back and tell him "NO". The other day I'd closed his crate, so he went in to Jazzy's crate, pulled her good pillow out and did get a small hole in that before I caught him. SUCH a brat. Interesting, he never even attempts to chew the big pillow that I got for Gypsy, which he also sleeps on during the day.
When I have to leave him during the day, I take the good bedding out of the crate and give him paper towels to lay on. It doesn't matter how long I'm gone, when I get back there's not much left but fluff.
Someone at a recent show told me to get "Egyptian bath rugs", which she had simply gotten at Big Lots. Said her shredders couldn't shred them. Unfortunately, the Big Lots here in town closed recently and I haven't gotten around to looking elsewhere {don't want to spend a lot, just in case….} so I can't personally vouch for them. She is someone whose info I believe I can rely on, though.
Anyway, good luck on that quest. I sure have no real solution yet, and think I may never!
Yes there are "just" shredders period… and alwasy will be so..... Most people that have them use paper for bedding or nothing at all...
Max was a shredder. He also suffered from mild separation anxiety. My gut feeling is that the shredding is done to relieve anxiety a lot of the time. When he was at home with Pepper, and I was at work, he wasn't too bad with blankets. When he was at the vets for his dental, I went to pick him up, and there were all these strips of blanket in his kennel, and I thought they were using that as some kind of bedding. But they then told me that morning–it was a nice wool blanket.....I could not believe how he had shredded it.
Tayda used to shred things because of anxiety. She actually shredded the plastic tray in the bottom of her crate!! But since she has gotten used to my place and sees it as home now, no shredding. She and Lenny will now de stuff toys, but usually, I just let them take the stuffing out of it, and then i take the toy and restuff it with the stuffing that is spread all over the floor. No reason to keep buying toys! I used to spend lots of money on toys, but now I give them stray socks tied together, or take a tennis ball and put it in a sock and tie the end of it, or pop bottles, to play with. stuff like that.
True shredders shred when they are anxious, shred when they are bored, shred when they are relaxed, shred when they are playing, shred when no one's looking, shred when everyone's looking…. LOL....
at least that describes Keoki.
He used to try to tear up the house carpeting, but we managed to break him of that . . . . almost completely.
The rug {it's an indoor/outdoor kind of rug} in the mud room - where the dogs enter the house and stay on rainy days until the mud has dried off of them a bit -- is shredded all about the edges. I just keep trimming the edges off and trimming the edges off. Eventually there'll be so little left it'll be pointless and I'll have to replace the rug. {It's what the kids wipe their feet on, so it needs to stay}
A visitor once left a pillow on the couch. Big mistake. No more pillow.
Yesterday I had houseguests and he got a hold of a little girl's pair of gloves......now she has one.
If there is any sort of fabric or paper on it, he'll shred it for you.
Deke shreded as a puppy but he has stopped. I get blankets at yard sales for $.50 or a $1.00. (If you have time to go them.) I just wash them before I give them to him. That way if he makes a mess of any sort I just get rid of it and put in a new one.
omg, i am laughing so hard at your replies that my eyes are watering, oh how we love our shredders. :))))))))) i bet our shredders would make the best hunters, can you imagine what they would do to their prey????? oh well, i guess fela is going to have a chilly winter. 
thanks all for your replies.
my girl shreds everything too like blankets - pillows etc - everything EXCEPT her crate "bedding" which i use all tee shirts - come to think of it i have two bs and the one that shreds everythign doesnt shred her "bedding" and the one that shreds nothing outside of the crate shreds his bedding! odd!
check out my photo album -there is one of my girls shredding in action!!!
Please all be careful with your Shredders… as they can eat fabric and then cause a blockage... it happens all the time.. if you have a real shredder... do not leave them with fabric... put them on papers......
Dash is a shredder also. I have a canvas tarp in there for him to lay on. He hasn't been able to destroy it…..yet.
my girl shreds everything too like blankets - pillows etc - everything EXCEPT her crate "bedding" which i use all tee shirts - come to think of it i have two bs and the one that shreds everythign doesnt shred her "bedding" and the one that shreds nothing outside of the crate shreds his bedding! odd!
I don't know how old or reliable your girl is, but Keoki doesn't shred his night time bedding . . . until last night. For whatever reason in his crazy Basenji head, he woke up at 2:30 AM today and shredded the daylights out of part of his bed.
He doesn't seem to ingest what he shreds – just rips little pieces, tosses them aside, rips more, tosses more. {no, I'm not complacent -- I immediately remove ALL shredded objects and stuffing} Makes me nuts.
Dash is a shredder also. I have a canvas tarp in there for him to lay on. He hasn't been able to destroy it…..yet.
Canvas is a good idea… but again, watch for missing pieces and strings... as it is the stringing things that can knot around in their belly and cause a blockage.. and it might not appear for months....
my chews and tosses too!! they know how to push our buttons!
I try and see a silver lining…my wife and I are (were) horrible packrats, but the more She-Ra gets ahold of and ruins, the more we have to throw out and clean up.
No joke, our house has never been more organized and clean!
I try and see a silver lining…my wife and I are (were) horrible packrats, but the more She-Ra gets ahold of and ruins, the more we have to throw out and clean up.
No joke, our house has never been more organized and clean!
I know what you mean. After Max had to be put to sleep last year, it was several months before I adopted Tyler and Zoey, and I got into the bad habit of leaving stuff lying around everywhere. My house looks much better now that Tyler and Zoey are here
Lots of exercise can help with many issues…
Re crate blanket destruction issues, my breeder suggested putting a whole roll of paper towels in the crate..minus the plastic wrap of course the dog gets the joy of tearing it to bits...and it makes a nice nest for them to lay in when they are done.
Lots of exercise can help with many issues…
Re crate blanket destruction issues, my breeder suggested putting a whole roll of paper towels in the crate..minus the plastic wrap of course the dog gets the joy of tearing it to bits...and it makes a nice nest for them to lay in when they are done.
That's what Keoki is down to now – as of 3 AM today when he decided to wake up and tear the stuffing out of his last bed. He won't be getting any more.
Well, I don't toss the whole roll in. I can get away w/about 1/2 roll if I toss in a bunch of unrolled paper towels. He still gets to shred away to his hearts content. Then, I can toss another 1/2 roll's worth in the next day, and he gets the fun all over again.
These goofy dogs.:rolleyes:
Cory doesn't shred during the night - only when she's crated during the day. She definitely shreds then. A sheet lasts only 2 daytime crating episodes. I don't think she eats it; I've never seen any evidence of fabric in her BMs. I'd consider trying the paper in her crate but judging from the little wads of paper I've pulled out of her mouth, I wonder if she'd eat the paper. Is it as dangerous for them to eat the paper as it for them to eat the fabric?
Pat
