Destructive behavior at 13 months

[Trish Baron]

We have a 13 month old female labradoodle who has suddenly become destructive. For the past month or so she has been chewing up decorative pillows and other household items. This primarily occurs when we are at work. We have not been crating her for at least 6 months and until recently she has not been a problem. We were warned that puppies go through this stage around this age. Any suggestions?

[Ginny Nightingale]

Back to the crate! And maybe someone to come in during the day to give her a walk? Also back to training classes for some refresher work.

[Jane, Guinness and Murphy]

I agree with this....they have to earn the right to be out of the crate.  How much exercise is she getting?  Often when they start this behavior it's because they're bored and frustrated....lots of exercise really helps.

[Joyce (Casey & Cody's mom)]

How long is she alone during the day? Perhaps doggie day care would be an option. If she has to be home alone, I personally wouldn't want to see her crated longer than 4-5 hours at a time without having some "run around" time. And access to several chew toys.

[Trish Baron]

She is home for about 4 hours in the morning and 4.5 in the afternoon. Someone always comes home for lunch.
When I check our security cam, I see she most often does damage shortly after we leave in the morning or afternoon
She has plenty of chew toys that we replenish often. I stopped getting stuffed toys because she would disembowel them and we would come back to a house of fluff. Seems like she's using the pillows now.
I'd hate to have to crate her again. She loves lying by the glass doors and watching what's going on in the neighborhood.

[Gail and Bailey]

Can you put her crate beside the glass doors so she can look out while she is in the crate?

[Mary ann & Lincoln]

We went through this with Lincoln too when he was a year old.   He is not even home alone during the day. My husband is retired and I work from home.  He just would suddenly go grab a pillow, he chewed up our remote etc.  so, we started putting everything away at night so he could not grab it in the morning.  He has gotten better now, but that went on for about 2-3 months.  Once he had something he would not drop it either.  so I started to bang on a pan  1-2X and the noise would make him drop it.  Now I just say " I'll get the pan;' and he drops it.  He is 16 mos old now.  It is like the terrible 2's with kids.  

[Jessica, Loki and Moose]

Both of my guys have gone through these phases-pretty sure my puppy (10months old) is still in that phase but he's crated when I can't watch him so I don't have to find out the hard way. :) With my older dog, he was crated until 6 months and then I left him un-crated for a few months and came home to find he has half destroyed a down comforter, so not fun to clean up. He also loves pillows like your baby and for a while I just put all decorative pillows out of sight hoping that "out of sight out of mind" would apply to dogs too.  Anyways, crates are the way to go in my opinion, my older dog is now 22months and only a month or two ago I felt that I could transition back to allowing him small sections of the house. He gets anxious and starts chewing things but thankfully he does not mind his crate! As far as exercise goes, my older dog is completely exhausted with two 30min walks a day which is great but in contrast the puppy needs to run and run and run at a park or play fetch to have any dent in his energy. Some dogs need more than walks to tire them out so they don't become destructive out of boredom. Maybe a doggie daycare if there is one by you and your dog is comfortable with lots of dog? I know some members here do not like doggie daycare but for us it's great to break up a work week, we usually will go on Wednesday's. I figure they are running around like crazy on the weekends so by the time we get to Wednesday they need to go do something fun and then they (by they I mean the puppy mostly) are so tired from daycare that they are usually very mellow until its the weekend again :)