Does anyone leave their dog to rome the house? I've done it with oneother dog that I had but he was never really destructive anyways. Lately we've switched from leaving him in his crate to leaving him in the laundry room which is pretty big and he's done great with it but I know he likes being in thehouse better. He did get out once and just chewed up a luffa a little bit but was just layingin my bedwhen I got home.

Has anyone made this transition or have any advice on it? Or even failed with it and think huskies are too crazy! Ha

How old is the dog?
I started leaving Bodhi alone at about 2 and a half for short periods.
He didn't know I was training him, because I'd do yard work or something outside where I could check on him. Then I started sneaking my stuff out when I was going to leave. He absolutely knows when I put on a jacket, so I didn't want him to know. Lots of times, he'd stay asleep.
He's now 3 and I can leave him for a couple hours. But I close off the bathrooms; that's where he gets in trouble.

He's almost 5 months, so maybe a little young still idk! But I do like the idea of starting with short periods and slowly increasing

Yes and no..we will do it for short amounts of time, but otherwise they go in their run outside. On valentines day we went out for tea, gone not even an hour, and come home to find they had managed to open the kitchen door and grab two blocks of chocolate off the counter and eat it - emergency vet trip and $140 later - not such a great idea!

Crate time at 5 months.

Pippa's a little over a year and while she's generally well mannered while I'm around, there is absolutely no way I'd leave her out while I was gone.

However, there are people on here that have never used crates with their dogs, but I certainly think they're in the minority.

Maya is never crated but Sophie and Kay are when i leave and at bed time. Maya knows when we're about to leave and she just gets herself comfortable and lays on the couch.

Ours aren't crated, it's not really the done thing in Aus. When we go to work they go into their run which has 6ft fencing around a double garden shed which they have free access to, it has a splash pool and trees for shade. We're getting ready to concrete it before we get winter otherwise they would never be allowed in the house.

I crate Sheba. I crate her because for one I know she would destroy the house if she had free run. I left her out for not even 5 minutes, and she had three books destroyed and had also gotten into a VERY important file keeper and destroyed vet records, copies of my resume (in my line of work, you always need an updated resume), copies of my nuclear paperwork, medical papers.. It was bad.
I also crate her for her safety. If it wasn't paper she got into, who knows what it would have been and if she would have choked on it or not. For me, crate = safety.

At 5 months, all my dogs would have been crated while I was gone. They're also crate trained, and were perfectly content in their crates by 5 mo. Its still their special place. Now that all my dogs are past the worse problems, except Panzer, all 4 trained dogs roam the house freely, for as many as 8hrs. Panzer has her large kennel, rather than a crate, and if I am gone more than an hour, she is put in there. Otherwise, I can trust her.

I've found that my dogs really don't destroy my stuff, so long as I keep them mentally and physically stimulated enough. If they did destroy things, I would crate them with no bad feelings. The dogs like their crates. There is nothing mean, unfair, or cruel about crating your dog. What would be far worse would be to let them have free roam, and then come home and get upset at them/punish them for exploring their newfound freedom.

Varu is 14 months and isn't crated when I leave. He is generally well behaved though and I make sure if I'm leaving him alone for a while he's been well exercised so he is content to nap while I'm gone. The only time he's had an issue is when he had the runs and poop'd 7 times over night.

We have left Kerian and Blaze uncrated for a few hours at a time. I usually crate them when we are leaving because the few times we have left them out I found socks and gloves with holes in them on their beds. I really don't want to come home and find they have ate the socks or gloves and we need surgery or something to prevent blockage.

Kerian and Blaze are both about 3 years old.

I am sure we will leave them out more and more just husky proofing the house (removing socks and gloves).

They will go into the crates with no problem when we need them to.

I

We crate Nova when we leave & for feeding. At night he just lays next to the bed or next to Will's computer. We haven't tried alone time when we both are gone yet.

We adopted Dakota at the age of 2 and he had separation anxiety and was destructive as a result. We crated him until he was 4 years old. When he was 4 I started leaving him baby gated in the bedroom and he did fine with that for a year. With no destruction during the year of being baby gated in a single room I decided to try leaving him loose with run of the whole house when he was 5 years old. I have never had a single issue in the 3 years he's had full run of the house while home alone.

Selena is only 15 weeks, she's never been crated and I do let her have free roam of the house when I leave for short periods. I have a baby gate so she doesn't go down the hall to all the bedrooms and bathroom but that is up all day long even when I am home so the cat has some rest time! My house is pretty much puppy proof since I do daycare from home so it's kid proof..kind of the same thing lol. So as long as everything is picked up and I ALWAYS make sure she gets exercise outside either playing with another dog or running circles around my 2 acre yard for 20 minutes then she's awesome in the house even for a couple hours

Loki is 7 months and give him free roam of the living room, kitchen and dining room. All other rooms have the doors shut. Worse he has gotten into while we were out was the living room trash can filled with snotty tissues. He just shredded them all over the living room. He normally just sleeps until we get home. The most we have left him alone is about 5 hours

i think crating is a great idea if you cant have them is a husky proof room! better then a vet bill.
we carted S&J for about 1.5yrs after adopting them. then tested them hr by hr till we could leave them on the lower level of the house and husky proof the area while we are at work, every now and then they find something we forgot to put away and we have to clean up.

We very rarely crate Ezio anymore. When he was a very young puppy we would whenever we needed to go to the grocery store or something. After awhile we "upgraded" him to the kitchen (with his crate open in the kitchen so he could sleep in it if he wanted) fenced off with a baby gate. I think around 7 months we started letting him free-roam the apartment even when we left for long periods of time. He still occasionally had accidents at first, which he knew was a bad thing because he'd immediately run into his crate when we got home. The fact that he knew it was bad made us feel a little better about it, and he only had accidents in front of the door or in the kitchen (tile surfaces). There were a few occasions where he chewed shoes (two pairs of my flats and a pair of flip-flops, destroyed), but not since. He's 11 months old now and, knock on wood, hasn't had an accident or destroyed anything in quite a long time.

HELL NO; Bandit's in his crate anytime we aren't home. Its not just because I don't want him to ruin things, its also for his protection because there isn't anything this pup WONT eat.

I haven't really crate trained Cooter, so usually when we leave he goes outside on his run unless it's for short periods of time. I close off the bathrooms and make sure there's nothing within his reach, or he comes along depending on what we're doing. Just the other day I left him alone for about 30 minutes and he tore into a gift bag I had for a client, full of chocolate and such. I find it's made way, way, way worse if he hasn't had ample exercise. A tired dog is a good dog! ... most of the time

We are going to start leaving Ellie out of her cage pretty soon. She is 7 months old and is crated while we are away but sleeps on a bed next to ours the whole night. We tested her at 15 minutes alone about a month ago and when we returned she was sleeping by the front door to our apartment and didn't have any anxiety accidents. We will definitely be starting gradually at 15 then 20 minutes and so on but would like to work up to an 8 hour day. She goes to daycare currently but it would be nice to leave her at home.

That's a pretty good plan, the only thing I would worry about is that at around 8 months old they start to go through a rebellious stage. If that happens then you'll probably want to wait until it phases out before leaving her by herself at home. Personally I wouldn't give them free roam of the house for 8 hours at a time, if they get bored then it could be trouble. Although every dog is different and as they get older I'd imagine that they could stay inside longer unattended. Good luck!

Ellie347 wrote:

We are going to start leaving Ellie out of her cage pretty soon. She is 7 months old and is crated while we are away but sleeps on a bed next to ours the whole night. We tested her at 15 minutes alone about a month ago and when we returned she was sleeping by the front door to our apartment and didn't have any anxiety accidents. We will definitely be starting gradually at 15 then 20 minutes and so on but would like to work up to an 8 hour day. She goes to daycare currently but it would be nice to leave her at home.

I wouldn't do it. I had the same bit of confidence with Anya right before turned 7 months old. I was able to leave her up to 2 hours with no separation anxiety spazz outs. So, one day before I left for work, instead of putting her in the kennel I closed the bathroom, bedroom and pantry doors and she had free range of the rest of the apartment and this is what happened:

She destroyed her dog bed and littered the ENTIRE apartment with it.


Do NOT trust a teenage husky. They will play you into a false sense of security and then disappoint you.

The obligatory grain of salt though: their destructiveness is a function of exercise and stimulation. Leaving them alone for the day when you leave for work, presumably in the morning when they don't get exercised and tired out as much, is probably not the best idea at this age. But leaving them alone while you go out for 3 hours at night after jogging and playing and feeding, that is a different story all together.

Juneau has had free roam of the entire house since she was 10 months.

I started gradually at first once she was fully potty trained at 4 1/2 months. We would leave her out when we'd go to dinner, or do yard work. She has been pretty good to not chew on the loose items around the house. It goes in spurts. My boyfriend will leave his shoes and remotes laying around and it drives me bananas. I always end up picking them up lol.

The longest she's been loose in the house is about 10-11 hours. Nothing was destroyed. She is pretty lazy though.

But lately, with this cold weather, she has been a real houdini! She has been chewing on the carpet and tearing up the padding underneath it. So I've been crating her now. I haven't exercised her much, I'll admit. I'm sure boredom is a huge factor in this. She has also recently discovered that she can reach items on the bathroom counter, so we keep those out of reach now.

Just start it gradually and see how they do.