I have a teacup chihuahua, a cute tiny 2lb 4 year old that I couldn't love more. Since she was young, we trained her to go on pads in the house, since it's kinda pointless to walk a dog that small to do it's things. As of recently, she's been pretty bad though. 80% of the time she does her business on the pads, all the other times she does it where she's not supposed to. As a solution, my mom who has pretty archaic and old-fashioned views on dogs, and thinks they understand like we do decided to buy a little gate/fence and fence off her area when we're not with her (she has her kennel, bed, food, water & pad in a section of the basement). This brought on what I think is separation anxiety, as she continually cries and cries when she wants to be let out. We ignore her when we don't want her out, as to not let her crying control us. Yesterday, however, I came home to the most horrific sight. I go downstairs to let her out and bring her upstairs with me and I see a pool of blood by the fence, and parts of the fence bloodied up as well. She was biting the fence as to get out and just tore her mouth apart. Again, mind you this is a 2lb dog. I inspected her mouth and it wasn't anything serious from what I could tell, and I cleaned up the blood.
I need serious help. I don't even know where to start. It's a vicious cycle. We take out the fence, she does things where she's not supposed to, which frustrates us. We put the fence on, and we could come home one day to a dead dog from how bad she could hurt herself trying to get out. What can we do? On top of all this she is also a frequent eater of her own feces, which is really embarrassing when people handle her, and just overall unsanitary, and we have no idea how to stop that either.
If anyone can please help me and my family deal with this I would really appreciate it. I just want little coco to be a happy girl.. which she may or may not be right now.
I need serious help. I don't even know where to start. It's a vicious cycle. We take out the fence, she does things where she's not supposed to, which frustrates us. We put the fence on, and we could come home one day to a dead dog from how bad she could hurt herself trying to get out. What can we do? On top of all this she is also a frequent eater of her own feces, which is really embarrassing when people handle her, and just overall unsanitary, and we have no idea how to stop that either.
If anyone can please help me and my family deal with this I would really appreciate it. I just want little coco to be a happy girl.. which she may or may not be right now.