Need Help With my Dog

puppyloverlauren • 1 December 2013 at 5:35 PM

Every Sunday my family and I go to church at 8:15 AM, we have to leave our dog at home because we can't take him with us. We come back at around 2PM and I always run to the door to open it. The first time we did that, he scratched the door until a little blood came out. We didn't like that and we were worried about him so we decided to chain him up at the bathroom. We did that multiple times and every time I came back, I would always see him choking and it broke my heart but there was no other way. One Sunday we went out and we came back in and the rack in the bathroom fell, not on him, but took up almost the whole space. Gladly, he wasn't injured. Lately we let him out instead of tying him to the bathroom. He dug up the carpet a little but we punished him. He kept doing that, sometimes he didn't, and sometimes he did. We put up an extra carpet so he couldn't dig on the original carpet. Below the original carpet are nails, that's what made him bleed. So today we went out again for service and again, I quickly ran home to the door. I opened the door and found that the 2nd carpet was torn off, and the original carpet hole was made bigger(it was opened up from previous scratchings) I stood there in shock and checked his paws, his nails were bloody. All I could do is tell him no, I couldn't do anything about the bleeding nails. I want him to stop digging up the carpet and hurting himself more, but I also don't want him to choke from tying him up in the bathroom. Does any dog owners know what to do?

iv24 • 2 December 2013 at 1:28 PM

@puppyloverlauren Do you take him for a walk before going to the church? And does he do it when you're at home or when you go to out (to school, for example)? And how do you punish him? You should say "no" when you see him doing that, so he stops and understand that he shouldn't do that.. not later, because dogs don't understand that they've done something wrong and are being punished for it. It could be also a health problem, maybe you should take him to the vet.