[Dailydrool] Looking for Advice

[Nicole Haase]

I have an older boy hound and a 5 yr old girl hound. When I leave the house,
the girl hound has always been baby-gated in the kitchen while the boy hound
has the run of the house. He mostly just sleeps in the bedroom, so we don't
worry about him. The girl hound will pee and poop on the carpet if we give
her the run of the house. We give her the run of the kitchen and she does
not mess in there. That has worked for two years.

Recently, she has started knocking down the baby gate to access the rest of
the house and invariably pees and poops on the carpet when she does. She'll
do this if I'm gone for an hour or six hours. We started moving a large
stuffed chair in front of the baby gate so that she couldn't knock the gate
down. That lasted about three days and today we came home after 5 hours to
find that she had knocked down the gate, moved the chair and messed in the
house.

I am currently unemployed and have been home pretty much non-stop. When I
was working, she could go up to 9 hours on her own in the kitchen with no
problems. I'm surmising that she's now acting out because she's used to me
being home during the day and she's acting out when I'm not home.

My best guess at the next step would be to crate her, but I've never had to
crate a dog before and it feels like such a big, mean step.

Does anyone have any suggestions for how to handle my new, naughty hound?

Thanks

-- 
Nicole Haase
nicole.haase at gmail.com
414-708-3542
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