Pebbles previous owner said she was crate trained, leash trained, does not potty in the house...I should have thought twice about why on earth some one would want to give away a perfectly healthy dog which they had raised for almost three years, but I was so aw struck my brain clearly wasn't functioning properly at the time. I so badly just wanted a dog of my own. While being a Senior in college isn't really conducive to puppy raising, I though I got the easy way out by getting a grown dog. Man was I ever wrong. Please don't misunderstand what I'm saying I wouldn't giver her up for the world now, but it's been a long time coming, and I won't deny that I didn't have my doubts that we were going to make it through.
After returning to school for the week I worried about Pebbles and how she would deal with me picking her up and then leaving her so soon. However, my mother assured me that all was OK and that Pebbles was adjusting fairly well to being in a household with small dogs. (Her previous owner had cats, a Border Collie Mix and a Dogo Argentino). My worries subsided and I tried to concentrate on my upcoming finals. About a week later I received a text from my mother containing nothing but a picture. A picture of Pebbles crate with a softball sized hole in the side. I immediately called her and asked what happened. She informed my that Pebbles had chewed the hole in the side of her crate, ripped the mat to shreds, tore her nose and paw pads up from digging at the cage, and barked until she was hoarse. We upgraded her to a wire crate with a plastic pan. She tried her darnedest to chew her way out (including the pan) for a few days and once she realized she couldn't get out she quite. We thought we had weathered the storm.
I worked with Pebbles quite a bit on basic commands and found that she is smart as a whip. She knew the basics and in no time she was learning more 'advanced' tricks. Her repituar now includes: sit, shake, high five, down low, gimme 10, dance, hop, spin right, spin left, roll over, 'sneak' (army crawl), sit pretty, stick 'em up, & 'bang' (play dead). I continued training every chance I got and soon Pebbles and I had an in-separable bond. She continued her rug destroying behaviors but her frustration to being crated seemed to be isolated to that destruction only. We were careful where her crate was set and made sure that nothing was near enough for her to reach and the problem seemed to have worked itself out just like the barking and crate chewing.
By the first week in June my house was ready to move into, my parent brought a load of furniture from home, and I started settling in. Pebbles continued to stay at home with my parents until it was calm enough in Findlay for her to join me. A week later she was all mine and we were happy as two peas in a pod. Though I worked some long shifts and weird hours I made sure to spend all my free time with her, training, and bonding. However, with in a very short amount of time her behaviors all seemed to start over, this time escalating to an even higher degree of anxiety. She would tear into anything that she could move her cage close enough to get a hold of, towels, door mats, plastic bags... I continued working with her, treating her, feeding her, trying to make her crate a "happy" place to be. All to no avail, she won't touch the her kong in the crate, she shoves chew toys out the sides, and generally just hated every second that she is was in there.
I started doing some research and finally found a name for her condition. It's called separation anxiety (SA). SA is a medical condition that basically equates to a human panic attack. Here is a list of symptoms from Stacy's Wag 'N' Train:
Your dog is likely to have separation anxiety if:
 | The dog chews on a variety of things, but chewing is often focused on items that smell most like you (or a particular person in your house) such as recently discarded clothes, including underwear or socks, or favorite chairs; and /or escape routes (doors or windows). The dog only chews these items when you're gone. |
| The dog tries to stay close to the things that smell most of you (chewed stuff will still be warm when you get home) |
| The dog pees or poops inappropriately, sometimes in many locations. |
| The dog barks continuously during the day, perhaps after a build-up of whining. The barking is not on-off-on-off. |
| The dog always shows these behaviors when left alone, even for short periods (30 minutes or less). |
| The dog is wild to greet you, and is still stressed, anxious and clingy when you first arrive home. The dog does not appear "guilty" over destroyed items. |
| Destruction begins soon after you leave; or possibly again shortly before you come home. |
| The dog cannot be isolated from you at any time, even in a different room with the door closed. |
| The dog sleeps with you. (This does not mean that all dogs who sleep with their owners will get separation anxiety. It does mean that dogs that survive being apart from you at night can survive it during the day, too). |
| The dog gets increasingly distressed as you prepare to leave. |
| The dog is constantly following you and demanding your attention when you are home. |
I did as much research on SA as I could, scouring every bit of information I could get my hands on. A month later I was home for the 4th of July. I had hit my breaking point and was tired of putting so much effort into something...a life...and having no considerable effect on it. I was tired of scrubbing projectile diarrhea from my walls, coming home to something new that had been chewed, or even worse a frantic injured dog. The ride home from Findlay had never been so long as I watched my so perfect peaceful dog sleep next to me.
Things got worse over the holiday weekend, My mother and I had only been gone a few hours and Pebbles had both urinated and defecated prior to our departure. I crated her up and gave her a treat as I always did when I left. Upon our arrival at home we found a frantic dog covered in feces with a bleeding nose and half a brand new rug completely unraveled in her crate. I had hit the wall and gave up, I was done, and upon being so completely frustrated decided that I was going to give her back to her old owners. My mother called and confronted the previous owners with some of her problems that had "mysteriously" popped up when we brought her home.
They proceeded to tell my mother that basically she had no rules or boundaries, period, while living with them. If she whined she got left out of the crate, she threw a fit/cried/made a mess when someone left she got to go next time. They confessed that her problems had gotten so bad that they kept her sedated part of the time and thought of euthanasia twice, they had the appointments made and backed out. But, they 'sincerely' apologized and said if I really wanted to give her up they would take her back and euthanize her as they were tired of dealing with her. Obviously I could not let that happen and it truly became my mission in life to "fix" her problems and make her a respectable dog.
