I've been gradually working up the courage to start re-training Tanner to tolerate confinement when I'm gone. With past owners he's chipped teeth and bloodied his mouth frantically trying to escape a crate and caused a lot of property damage trying to get out of the house. I have two door frames that will need to be replaced from when I tried closing him in rooms when I first got him. As long as he has his doggy door open and the run of the house he's fine.

Tonight I had to close the back bedroom door to cut him off from the doggy door because one of my neighbors has a vocal hound dog visiting and they were "chatting". I left to go run errands for several hours and forgot to open the door before I left.

No damage! None! Not a single scratch or tooth mark that wasn't there before! He even still had water left in his bowl. He was a hair more frantic about his greeting than normal and really had to pee but he's settled down just as quick as he normally does. I'll have to ask my neighbors if he was barking but they know that my phone number is on the front gate and they can call me if he's disturbing them.

I'm so happy he didn't flip out! I've really been stressing about leaving him crated in my room when I go to school in January. I'm picking up the bigger crate my parents have tomorrow so we can start re-crate training.

My Mom says that I'm the most stable home Tanner has ever had. She thinks that since we've been through several schedule and routine changes he might finally be trusting that a change in routine doesn't mean he's going to be bounced to another person again.

congrats!! we left ours loose for almost a full work day yesterday and she didn't destroy anything and i wanted to scream it from the mountaintops!! I feel your joy

Good for you.

This is an interesting topic for me. It reinforces a notion I have about preventative measures and long-term conditioning. When I adopted my mature GSD, she was a dream in the house, except for one issue. She liked to get on the furniture. For over a year, If I forgot to cover the couch, she would get on it. However, at about a year and a half, I realized that she was no longer getting on the couch. Now, I don't have to protect the furniture She is completely broken of that habit.

After several months of having a kiddy gate to keep her out of the carpeted section of my house, I noticed that she wouldn't go on the carpet unless invited, even if the gate were left wide open. She even goes in her crate on command and stays in it, even though I removed the front.