Don't leave me

 We brought Booker home at 8 weeks old.  And from that time on he was crated whenever we left as we have done with all our dogs.  He is lucky because Marc mostly works out of our house so he doesn't get crated every day and when he does it's not for that long.

With our dogs we've always started leaving them out for brief periods gradually getting longer as we could trust them.  That's always worked great.

But then....Booker.

He is our first dog with textbook separation anxiety.  We have to literally pick him up and drag him to his crate.  The ENTIRE TIME he is in there he barks and cries and paws at the crate door.

When we get home the crate door is dripping with spit from him frothing.  The carpet outside the door and his crate bed are soaked.

We left him out for a short period of time and he shredded all the paper - including bills - he got off my desk.  He did this with Sisko right in the room.

So then we tried shutting him and Sisko in our tiled bathroom.  He pulled the toilet paper off the roll hanger and shredded it.  He caught the bottom of my robe hanging from the door and pulled until the hanger ripped out of the door.

So the next time we took everything out of the bathroom he could possibly get to - or so we thought.  He launched himself up onto the platform where our jacuzzi tub is and knocked over a glass candle holder which broke.  Fortunately he didn't cut himself or eat any glass.

So back to the crate he went.  I hate that he gets so upset but at least he's safe.

Calming music appears to have no effect.

So I just bought some hemp chews.  We've only tried twice but it hasn't seemed to make any difference.  We started with a low dose so we'll try upping it.

He otherwise is not a particularly anxious pup.  But us leaving him is the exception.

Hopefully he will outgrow it and can be left out when we leave!  I think it upsets me almost as much as him!!!