As pups and at different times, they have destroyed....

Bank cards, hair brushes, remote controls, cookery books, college work,make up, bills, a pack of christmas cards, and a first edition Neville Shute.

All my fault of course, should have been more on the ball!

Before I got Ryuk (and a good chunk of WHY his previous family wanted him out) he ate a trailer and a truck.....

Apparently they locked him in the trailer for heeling their kid and he chewed through the wall, encountered the metal outer covering so chomped his way around looking for a break in the metal, then when he didn't fine one he can-openered his way around and ended up collapsing half of the thing...

The truck he was apparently chained to the undercarriage of a junked truck because he kept yanking out his stake. He chewed his way up through the floorboard, destroyed the inside of the truck, came back out and managed to get half the bumper off before slipping his collar and running inside...


Since I've brought him home he's gotten into my goldfish crackers a few times and I came home to him out of his crate and sleeping on the fridge once but he really hasn't destroyed anything intentionally that wasn't paper and entirely justified, he rolled on one of my sculptures once but it really shouldn't have been on the floor lol.

i'm 55 years old , have a great family and a good job , but i've never owned or ever really wanted a new new car , and about ten years ago i figured out why .

i left my dog hector , who was about a year old at the time , in my vehicle , which at that time was an '86 toyota tercel wagon with about 200,000 miles on it . when i returned from errands most of the rear seat was gone as well as all the rear seat belts .

of course that meant i couldn't take extra passengers , which would have just killed the gas mileage on that old car lol .

Titan, aka Tyson von der Riverside, ate the kitchen.

Well, to be fair, he just ate the rungs off four chairs, and was going for the legs, gnawed on the pedestal of the maple table that was part of the set, gnawed on the bottom corners of the cabinets, gnawed on the door to the mud room, and ate the floor in front of the door to the basement.

He was young, and impetuous, and impervious to some training efforts but we have worked out our differences.

He is a good mutt, after all of that.

For good or ill, he was diverted from gnawing the furniture and fixtures by introducing nyla-a-bones, the hard ones, which seem to redirect his gnawing interest from furniture. But he is a gnawer and chewer. He had developed a taste for mats and towels that has kinda been modified.

Of course, there was the tip to the surgeon to remove a chunk of rubber toy that got stuck in his intestine.

All and all, Titan lived up to his name, and the vet bills have been $4 grand or more, I think. The kitchen set tosses another grand or so into the mix. And the cabinets... And the floor.

Good thing I am reasonably handy and have tools. Again to be fair, I really didn't like the kitchen set to begin with but the cabinet stuff and doors and floor...

He exhibits a tremendous pride in his efforts and results. Eyes rolling here. He is curled up next to me.

Did I mention my bride was less than thrilled?

I have two stories.

A miniature poodle we had back in the 80's named Brandi was kind of a pill as a pup. When we left her in the house alone, we would lock her with a bed and some water in our laundry room. Apparently, she wasn't crazy about that arrangement one time because when we returned we found she had managed to remove almost all of the vinyl flooring and ate a good portion of it. Somehow, she was able to remove with her little poodle claws and teeth in two hours flooring that would have taken me a whole weekend to take up with all the proper chisels, scrapers, and power tools.

Our second story involves Tasha, our mutt that we lost about a year and a half ago. When she was much younger, she managed, without our knowledge, to whittle away the runners of a prized Bentwood rocker I acquired from Madrid while I was stationed in Germany with the Air Force. We only discovered it when I almost fell over backwards one time and saw the runners in back were almost completely gone. She managed to dispose of the evidence naturally so we never noticed. We've gotten smarter since then about watching over our pets and keeping them occupied and with help from this forum, haven't made the same mistakes with Bailey...........yet.

I wouldn't call any of my dogs high drive or high need. Just opportunistic hooligans given more freedom than they had earned.

The most dramatic incident happened just a couple of weeks ago, when we were on vacation and left the pack in the care of a house-sitter. New person in the house means her stuff is extra interesting, I suppose. That, and she didn't understand the "rule" that if it's left on the floor, it's edible.

I came home to a dog (Cinco) that had eaten a pair of athletic socks. Two whole high-top socks. They were in him for over a week until I even knew the socks had been eaten, and they started coming out both ends... which means they were also in-between. $800 later, a barium swallow, lots of x-rays, IV fluids, and an overnight stay in the ER. Luckily, he avoided surgery.

From the others, it's the usual list of shoes, throw pillows, the corner of the bath mat, the hem of the drapes, the carving on a table leg. Just enough damage to render the item ruined, but the dog unharmed. It ALWAYS means I've let them graduate from the crate too soon....

I have a medium/high drive German Shepherd. I took him to work with me one day when he was about 10 months old since the dog walker couldn't make it that day. We train in Schutzhund, so I have a nice setup for him in my SUV. At the time I had a very nice Jeep Grand Cherokee Limited Edition. Fully decked out, leather seats and all.

His setup in the back is a wire crate with a WeatherTec mat underneath it. A nice cushion in the crate, etc. I was coming out to walk him and play with him every 45-60 minutes. Even so I figured I would leave his crate door open so he could lay down in the back of the Jeep, walk around a bit, or sleep in his crate. I used three of those black metal wire crate dividers to block off the front seat area.

Or so I thought.

I came out to play with him and saw him sitting in the drivers seat, looking at me. It didn't register for a second, then I thought, "Oh no, he got by the dividers somehow!". I went around to the passenger side and opened the rear door. Leather bits and yellow foam bits fell out on the ground.

I saw some damage but waited to fully investigate until after I had walked him and put him into his crate, now with the door closed. I couldn't be mad at him or correct him since it was my fault and I didn't catch him in the act of doing anything wrong.

He had decided the front passenger seat, with the very nice, limited edition leather, was a fantastic chew toy. He shredded the leather from the outside lumbar/side cushion. Not just tore it off, shredded it. Bite marks in the headrest and all over the rest of the seat. Luckily that was the only one.

The dealership wanted over $1200 to repair the damage. I ended up getting a different vehicle recently since I wanted more room than my Grand Cherokee provided, and ended up trading in my Jeep with the seat damage still there.

Here is a picture of the carnage:

http://www.aboynamedbrody.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Seat-Damage.jpg

I learned an expensive lesson that day!

Okay, guess I have to fess up:

Our very first German Shepherd, Sam, was about as low=drive as you could get. I was home with her for 2 weeks as we moved into our new house. On my first day back to work she started chewing on our brand-new upholstered chairs. That was 44 years ago and we certainly didn't know about crates at that time.

There was also the sofa that Sam chewed up before the bill came in for it. An obedience judge friend of mine delights in telling that story.

Fast forward to 8 years ago; and I'll blame this one on my husband. "Time to let the dogs have run of the house," he said.
A one hour trip to Target resulted in a shredded sofa cushion...said sofa was 2 weeks old. Fortunately we were able to have a new cushion made.

I think we all learn the hard way !!

Logan destroyed the cable box on the back of the house once...lost TV and internet until it was replaced. He has also destroyed several bags of trash, chewed a few leashes in half, broke my hand, "picked" tomatoes out of the garden or ripped the entire plant out of the ground...etc.

Toni, Malinois #1 destroyed my computer tower when she thought she could chase the squirrel that was outside the window. Knocked the tower off the desk in her quest to get to the picture window. I was on the computer at the time, and she used my lap to launch herself at the window. I was too stunned to even yell at her...

We went on vacation once when Toni was about 8 months old. We had a house sitter come and let the dogs out a few times a day. Toni had to be crated at night, but I didn't want to have her crated the whole time we were gone, so I told the sitter to leave her loose during the day. We came home to the entire bed destroyed... bedding was in confetti sized shreds, pillow stuffing was everywhere, a perfect Toni sized hole was dug into the mattress. My pet sitter's explanation? "Yeah, Toni had some fun with the blankets." Ya think???

Caterina, Malinois #2 ate a hole in my kitchen door. Paul felt it was cruel to lock her in a crate when we were gone for the day, but she could not be trusted to be loose with the other dogs without supervision yet. He locked her in the kitchen with LOTS of toys and bones to occupy her. I came home to a head sized hole in the bottom of the door- It was a solid oak door. We still have the door- the cat uses the hole when we have the dogs locked out of the kitchen I use it to remind Paul that crates are good things