Why Your Dog Is Destroying Your House and What to do About It

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• Not a substitute for professional veterinary help.

Last week, I returned home to a huge surprise. My 11-year old dog Buster stood panting behind a baby gate, trapped by a door that had closed and latched behind it covered in plaster. Behind him, the door jam was ripped to shreds, the door handle bent and bitten, and the door streaked with blood from the tooth he’d broken in his frenzy.

Weirdly, Buster had clearly managed to escape from the baby-gate prison at some point while I was away—plaster was strewn throughout the house, mixed into a paste with thick strands of drool edging the house’s other doors—and yet, by the time I returned, he was back to the 18-inch wide “cage.” There are a lot of unknowns about what happened that day, but the why is clear: Buster had a severe panic attack when left alone.