Is my dog just attention seeking?

[tryphena rose]

So my dog is relatively good. She's very quiet, incredibly friendly and behaves well inside. She's high energy so outside she has issues with pulling and goes crazy whenever she sees other dogs because she wants to play with everyone always. When we first adopted her, she had separation anxiety. She would bark very loudly and even chewed up a wall while I left for a long trip one day. Getting her crate trained helped her tremendously with that. She no longer deals with separation anxiety and she doesn't need her crate while we're gone. However we have noticed that she's developed an extremely annoying habit of chewing up a small piece of paper and leaving it in the middle of the floor for us to see when we get home. To me, this seems like she's attention seeking because even if it's a whole pile of napkins, she'll chew up just one. Normally we scold her when she does this, but she also seems to anticipate the scolding as she looks scared and submissive when we walk through the door. Has anyone else struggled with this? And if so, how did you help to break your dog out of it?

 

[yeshuaslavejeff]

I constantly sought, seek, and look for good diet for the animals. Regular dog food has led to more dogs being put down a few decades now for turning on their owner/family often biting someone ... It is difficult to find true information, so keep looking, keep seeking, keep testing ....

 

[timewerx]

However we have noticed that she's developed an extremely annoying habit of chewing up a small piece of paper and leaving it in the middle of the floor for us to see when we get home.

My late dog loves to find paper we don't need anymore and chew it up and leave a pile in the corner

It's probably a bad idea but it seems like she thinks she's doing a very important job. She doesn't chew anything else, not even money left around, lol. She seems to recognize money even though we didn't train her.

Never trained her to do that but she probably saw me manually shredding pieces of paper containing sensitive information.

I don't discipline her on that one because she's very careful on the rest of our things. She knows exactly the things we value and leave them alone but we didn't train her, really strange.

 

[Chesterton]

So my dog is relatively good. She's very quiet, incredibly friendly and behaves well inside. She's high energy so outside she has issues with pulling and goes crazy whenever she sees other dogs because she wants to play with everyone always. When we first adopted her, she had separation anxiety. She would bark very loudly and even chewed up a wall while I left for a long trip one day. Getting her crate trained helped her tremendously with that. She no longer deals with separation anxiety and she doesn't need her crate while we're gone. However we have noticed that she's developed an extremely annoying habit of chewing up a small piece of paper and leaving it in the middle of the floor for us to see when we get home. To me, this seems like she's attention seeking because even if it's a whole pile of napkins, she'll chew up just one. Normally we scold her when she does this, but she also seems to anticipate the scolding as she looks scared and submissive when we walk through the door. Has anyone else struggled with this? And if so, how did you help to break your dog out of it?

That's really interesting that she chews up just one. You should consider yourself lucky though because I have a dog that chews up everything. I don't think mine does it for attention, I think she's just a high energy dog that loves chewing. I couldn't break her of it and I had to make her an outside dog. Even though she's got plenty of chew toys, in the backyard she's chewed up everything that isn't made of metal. Even jumps up and grabs low-lying tree limbs and chews them off, which saves me a bit of trimming at least.

 

[Halbhh]

So my dog is relatively good. She's very quiet, incredibly friendly and behaves well inside. She's high energy so outside she has issues with pulling and goes crazy whenever she sees other dogs because she wants to play with everyone always. When we first adopted her, she had separation anxiety. She would bark very loudly and even chewed up a wall while I left for a long trip one day. Getting her crate trained helped her tremendously with that. She no longer deals with separation anxiety and she doesn't need her crate while we're gone. However we have noticed that she's developed an extremely annoying habit of chewing up a small piece of paper and leaving it in the middle of the floor for us to see when we get home. To me, this seems like she's attention seeking because even if it's a whole pile of napkins, she'll chew up just one. Normally we scold her when she does this, but she also seems to anticipate the scolding as she looks scared and submissive when we walk through the door. Has anyone else struggled with this? And if so, how did you help to break your dog out of it?

Imo you can't break then of it I a good easy way, but you can attempt to remedy it by giving them one thing they need: something to chew on while you're gone. And of course plenty of play while you're home, like maybe fetch in the yard or s dog park.

 

[GodLovesCats]

Time, my first cat had a thing for rubber bands. She tipped the kitchen trash can over to crawl inside and dig them out. Then she carried it to her food bowl and dropped it in. It did not bother me because I knew she would never hamr herself, but they certainly are not good dog toys. What I don't know is why she did that. (Do not take this as a recommendation - rubber bands often do cause problems in pets.)

 

[Heavenhome]

One of my dogs, when something annoyed or frustrated her would somehow find a tissue and shred it up. (Never ate it, just shredded)

She never ever chewed up anything else or was destructive in any way, so as it wasn't a big deal, I figured it could have been way worse so I let it be her little "quirk".
After all no one is perfect and she was in every other way!

You've done a good job with your dog, I wouldn't " sweat the small stuff".