Hi all, needing some advice.
I have two wolfhound x’s, Gracie and Elvis.
Gracie is 9 months old, and is crossed with bulldog and (according to the people I got her from) “a touch of Haitian Dane”. Elvis is 6 months old and crossed with amstaff. Needless to say, they are both huge already. (For a bit of perspective, I am 5”3 and Gracie, on her hind legs, is almost as tall as me, and Elvis isn’t far behind).
My first problem is our yard. The place we are currently renting has a 1/4 acre backyard, which, when considering adopting puppies, I thought would be perfect for them. Boy was I wrong. It turns out there are massive gaps under the fence. Gracie (who we adopted a few months before Elvis) got out. Multiple times. Every time I blocked a gap, she found another one. Well, eventually I either got them all, or she lost interest in getting out. So, problem solved. Or so I thought.
Elvis comes along, and it turns out he likes to dig. He likes to dig so much he dug himself into the neighbours yard while they weren’t home, and yours truly had to scale the 6 foot fence to retrieve him. Again, we try blocking the holes. We put pepper and his own poop in the holes, as advised by a few people we know, to try to discourage him from digging. I don’t know if it worked. He just kept finding new holes. We ran out of stuff to block them with. We considered chicken wire, but honestly, it’s a 1/4 acre yard. We can’t possibly chicken wire the whole thing. So, okay, we decide: we know our lease is up soon, we can find a new house with a better fenced yard. In the meantime, we decide, we will keep the dogs inside and allow them onto the patio that has no access to the yard. When we go to work, we lock them on the patio. I feel constantly guilty about this, because the space isn’t very large. But honestly, it’s the only option. We tried leaving them inside the house but everyday we would come home to find it destroyed. No matter how hard we tried to put everything chewable up and away from them, they would find something. They chewed up electrical cords that were plugged in! Like they would have gotten a shock from that! They cost us hundreds, possibly thousands of dollars in damage. They chewed the walls, the couch, clothes, my makeup - e v e r y t h i n g.
So, patio it is. They’ve chewed the legs off half the chairs out there. Every day I come home from work and have to pick up literal mountains of poop from my patio. I weighed the bag once, and it was 4kg.
The problem is, we can’t let them outside. They have so much pent up energy. They pee and poo everywhere, even in the house. I’ve tried training them to only go on the patio or puppy pads, but they just don’t get it. Elvis understands puppy pads and will mostly use them, but Gracie never grasped the concept. No matter what we tried she won’t use them. As you can imagine, my house reeks. It smells disgusting no matter what I do, how hard I scrub the carpets or how many times I mop. I think the smell of dog piss is so ingrained into the carpet that it will need to be replaced. The smell depresses me so much. I hate coming home and walking into the smell. I’m so embarrassed when people come to visit and discourage it as much as I can, but sometimes they just drop in.
On top of all of this, they are badly behaved. It’s mostly Elvis. He just won’t listen. We used all of the same techniques on Elvis as we used on Gracie, but the difference between them is extreme. Gracie does anything asked of her: sitting, waiting, going to her bed, etc. Gracie is placid and lovely, with a beautiful temperament and is very obedient. Elvis is the opposite. He is obnoxious. (I never thought I would use the word ‘obnoxious’ to describe a dog, but there you go). He constantly invades personal space, biting and licking peoples faces. Often when I try to push him off me he snaps at my hand and has bitten me before. He never does anything he is asked - unless he feels like it! He’s demonstrated that he knows how to sit, where to go when we ask him to get on his bed, etc. He just only does it when he feels like it, which is rarely. He is obsessed with food. Every time he is fed he guzzles it in seconds and goes searching for more, even when we feed him more than the recommended amount for his size and weight. The vet says he is at a perfect weight for his age and breed. He constantly jumps up to the kitchen bench searching for food. I can’t leave anything on the bench to cool while he is in the house, because the moment I turn my back for a second he will jump up and eat it. I can’t even leave my half-drunk coffee there or he’ll drink it. I’m sure none of these things are good for my dogs health, but they’re too quick for me to catch them sometimes. I say ‘they’re’ because sometimes Gracie (encouraged by a Elvis, I think) does jump up for food, too. One time I left a loaf of bread on the bench and she stole it and ate most of it. This is really the only time she misbehaves.
One night recently, we forgot to close our bedroom door while we slept in the lounge room. I woke up to a disaster scene. The dogs had gotten into my oil paints, which were stored in the wardrobe in the bedroom. Gracie, whose fur is mostly white, looked like a Monèt painting. I had a few baskets of washing piled up in the bedroom waiting to be folded (don’t judge me) and the dogs had spread them everywhere and covered them all in oil paint. Fun fact about oil paint: it doesn’t come off. Not off clothes, anyway. Not with any method I’ve ever tried. If any of you knows a trick to getting oil paint stains out of your most favourite shirt, hit me up! They’d also gotten into my makeup stash, and chewed up hundreds - literally hundreds, I’m a reformed makeup fiend - of dollars worth of products.
So now, picture this. All of my clothes that I actually wear and that actually fit me, were in that laundry pile waiting patiently to be folded. They’re now all ruined. I can’t wear them. Nor can I do my makeup, because it’s all destroyed. I’m devastated. I’m depressed and constantly anxious over these dogs. My boyfriend is also depressed and angry over the situation. He resents the dogs so much, especially Elvis, who is technically his dog. I am the one who pushed to get a dog in the first place, when he didn’t want one. We then decided to adopt a second dog when we feared Gracie would be lonely by herself while we were at work. Ergo, Elvis. Anyway, the situation often causes arguments between my boyfriend and I. He very rarely feeds or cleans up after them, and one time when asked about it he mentioned that it was me who wanted the dogs, not him. So most of the responsibility is left to me. I’m at my wits end. I do love my dogs and rehoming them or getting rid of them in any way is out of the question. Obviously they need to be trained better - at least Elvis does, Gracie is honestly the goodest girl. Most of the time - but if the issue is that he needs better training, I’m not sure how to do it, and I’m worried it’s getting too late as he’s already 6 months old.
I know this post is super long, and if you got all the way to the bottom - thank you and congrats.
I guess my question is does anyone have advice, tip or tricks? I’m really suffering at the moment and I could use some help. Thank you
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from Pets https://www.reddit.com/r/Pets/comments/mct8hl/my_dogs_are_ruining_my_life/
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