Bad dog, Rex!

This is my favorite Charlie Brown and Snoopy movie, “Snoopy, Come Home.” In it, Snoopy has to escape an overzealous, crazy little girl who takes him in and names him “Rex” then abuses him with love, lol. Scroll to the 29:24 mark to see Snoopy and Woodstock get caught up, spanked, and choked out like a junkyard dog by this nutty little girl :) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mj5Nm4Tf_rs&feature=related When my dog started to act out because he didn’t like being left alone, I was reminded of this movie and joked about spanking him, as well. “Heel, Rex!” Now, one week later I think I am finally getting used to dog ownership. Last week I pondered giving him away because his separation anxiety coupled with my "new responsibility anxiety" was too much for me to deal with. Prior to adopting him, every dog owner we know was a know-it-all dog expert. “Crate-train him,” they said. “Sure, you can leave a dog in the crate all day while you’re at work. He’ll be fine. Dogs love their crates, makes them feel safe and secure. It’s their den.” Why the hell I bothered listening to them is beyond me. A crate is essentially a cage and what sense does it make that a dog would actually enjoy being locked up inside a cage for hours every day, holding his pee and bored out of his wits? That’s irrational thinking and we soon realized that our dog did not like being caged at all. In fact, he hurt himself busting out of that thing on day two of being in it. Day one we came home to find him and everything inside the crate completely trashed. He’d ripped his toys, bedding, and everything else within reach to shreds and was not pleased to have been locked up. So we put him in the bathroom and returned a few hours later only to find he’d trashed the one thing we’d left in there with him – his bed. Then he peed on my carpet (5 times within one week). And every time one of us gets up to go anywhere within the house, he follows. Turning on the TV didn’t help him cope with being alone, neither did leaving him with an article of clothing that had my sons scent on it. He just ripped the scented hoodie to bits. But when we’re with him, caged or not, he’s a good, calm dog. He doesn’t chew on anything that isn’t his, he doesn’t bark, or do anything other than sleep, eat, walk around, and want to be rubbed down. So, since he freaks out whenever we leave him and we have to go to work and make a living, we decided to doggy-proof our backyard and buy him a dog house. He won’t go into the dog house for shit, lol, but he loves the backyard. He runs around as fast as he can, eats grass, rolls in the grass, and plays with whatever he can make a toy out of. Today was the first day we left him in the backyard by himself. He saw me drive off and my son said he scratched at the backdoor for a while wanting to be let in. Then he began to rip up my son’s old boxing gloves that were lying around outside. So now that we know he turns into the Tazmanian Devil when we leave him, there is no way he’s going to remain in my house while we’re gone because if I come home and my house is trashed by a crazy, anxiety-ridden dog, I will beat him like Rex/Snoopy and throw him out into the backyard for good. And I don’t want to do that. I just hope he gets over his separation anxiety fast so we can all stop worrying.

here he is being a good dog. He's 7months old, by the way.