My chocolate lab is 8 months old and I bought him a basket this week. He never had one before, his crate was his only resting place till now. I had to take his vetbed away a couple of months ago because he started eating it. When I put the basket in my kitchen, he has no intention of lying down in it. He starts playing with it, biting and scratching it. He simply does not recognize it as a resting place. It's the same with the vetbed: he chews on it and humps it a lot. I tried to get him to lie down in the basket and wanted to give him a treat for it but he mouthed my whole hand (which he normally does not do). The basket gets him overexcited, like most new things do. Shall I simply persist and let him get used to the basket and take the risk that it might be completely destroyed before he eventually will use it for what it's meant? Is there a way to teach him to relax in it? Waiting for him to calm down and being able to reward him for that, might take an hour or so… Or is it better to reintroduce the basket at an older age, when he has calmed down, whenever that will be… I probably should have given him a basket from day one, would have saved me this trouble. Any advice would be welcome since I'm getting very nervous on this one… I hoped that by Christmas, he would relax in his basket next to my side, but at this point I even keep him out of my living room. My kitchen sometimes looks as if a tornado came by, so thank god for baby gates! While I'm writing this now, he's a very good boy, resting quietly in his crate...
Have you tried putting the vet bed in the crate, so he associated it with sleeping. And then put the vetbed in his basket? Our boy humps his vetbed too, every evening without fail, it's part of his evening routine. He collects all vetbeds together, from different sleeping places, and then proceeds to get a good grip on them with his teeth and then gets on with some practice.
Merlin was something of a bed destroyer. He had a lovely wicker basket, which he chewed and pulled apart until we had to take it away from him. He had various doggy beds that all got shredded. In the end, I gave up trying to give him lovely snugly expensive beds, and bought him the basic dog cushion from amazon. This has survived! Probably just because at nine months he has grown out of chewing things up (she says, hopefully).
I’ve always sworn by Vet bed. I like to use it as mats around the house. Of course, these pups like to prove you wrong - Keir has decided he like to chew and shed it All Vet bed has been put away for the time being. He’s fine with cushions and blankets in his plastic bed. .
Completely unrelated to your question but do we now have three Labs called Obi? My boy, Oban, is often nicknamed Obi. And then there is @Oberon with her Obi. I believe Oberon is a character in A Midsummer Night's Dream. ? My Oban is named for the town in Scotland. How did your boy's name come about?
My now (today) 8mth old plays with the vetbed (not original but similar idea) so I just don't give it to her at this stage...
I'm fine with the humping, since he never used my leg for this purpose. The problem is, at this stage he uses his vetbed ONLY for humping, chewing and playing around. He doesn't associate the vetbed with sleeping and relaxing, so putting it in the basket will not have the desired effect. I'm home a lot these days, so I can watch him closely and hope I can learn him not to chew it ('NO!') and encourage him to relax on it ('GOOD BOY!').
I'm a bit of a Star Wars fan, so I got the idea from the character Obi Wan Kenobi. I'm wondering now if it wouldn't have been better to have named him Chewie (after Chewbacca), because that's what he likes doing . Or maybe R2-D2, because of the noises he makes (he sometimes makes kind of a whistling sound) . I'm not a fan of typical dog names, I preferred him to have a name that's also used for humans. There's a famous ex-tennis player in Belgium who's son is called Obi and I believe the name might be more common in German-speaking countries. I also wanted a short name for my dog, since it's more practical at training.
I'm far from the expert in dog training, however I understand that it's much better to encourage the things you want him to do, rather than shouting at him when he does the things you don't want him to do. On the subject of chewing, we went with the strategy of buying ~20 toys (both hard and soft). 2-3 are available at any one time and we swap toys in/out of the toybox every day. There is always something new and interesting to chew. We have had zero problems with him chewing anything else in the house.
