Some more help on dog behaviour problems?

At least, WE consider it to be a problem…
She’s about 8 months old now, and puts up a REAL fuss when me and my husband have to go out – we can’t leave her in the yard because she goes so crazy that we’re worried she may actually manage to get over the gates or try to crawl under them and hurt herself (she’s tried that once and got her head stuck). We can’t leave her to run free in the house because she WILL decide to make a poop in one of the rooms that are carpeted – this has happened numerous times and I’m tired of cleaning that up and having ruined carpets – we even tried to cordone her off in the hallway where it is tiled, using hard board to close off to the one living room that doesn’t have a door – but she forces herself through that and into the room, and poops on the carpet.

So unfortunately we’ve had to resort to closing her in the bathroom – but she started chewing on the bathroom door because the corner at the bottom of the door was a little warped so she had something to start chewing on (despite the fact that we gave her toys to play with in the bathroom), and one day she chewed her way right through the door and out of the bathroom. So now we close her in our guest toilet – this door doesn’t have a weakness in it so she hasn’t started chewing her way out.

Before you say that it’s probably because we lock her up that she puts up such a huge fuss when we go out, i doubt that to be the reason, because she put up just as big a fuss when we closed her off in the hallways (including the kitchen because it was tiled), and that wasn’t so bad considering she had more space to move around in. We have a kitty door installed in the kichten door, so of course she started scratching at that while we were out and has splintered the door badly in trying to get out of the kitty door, which we keep locked. A couple of times she’s scratched at it so much that she managed to unlock it and get out. Fortunately we have a security gate, covered with some stuff that resembles mosquito wire (except it’s made from green plastic and it’s not as fine as mosquito wire – this is to keep kitty from going out the gate) – so when she got out the kitty door, she was stuck between the door and the gate with the netting, so of course she started chewing at the netting, which now has a big hole in it. That’s when we decided to close the kitchen door, so that she could only roam around in the hallway.

Anyway, not only this, but even when only me or my husband goes out and the other one of us stays at home, she’ll put up such a huge fuss, running around the house & whine for ages. This cannot be normal behaviour, surely. But that’s not all! Even when one of us just closes a bathroom door when we shower or go to the loo, she whines about that and get upset because she’s been shut out!

Or when one of us is outside, within her view, but just on the other side of the gate (meaning she can’t get right to our side), she’ll bark and whine and go crazy too – even if it’s just for a few seconds that she’s appart from us.

Her behaviour really is intolerable – and it can’t be normal…why is she behaving this way?!?! Since we both work from home, i thought that maybe that is the reason she puts up such a fuss when we’re separated, since we never leave her alone like the average person who goes off to work – but even so, since we had her, we’ve always gone out on errands for a few hours a day, only about 2 times a week at most, and after having her for 7 months now, she KNOWS that we come back after a few hours.

When we visit my husband’s mum and leave her there while we go do some errands, she’ll cry and whine when we leave her behind, even though she LOVES visiting my mum-in-law – she even has doggy friends there.

So why is she this way?! Does anybody have any diea? And more NB, does anyone know how to fix this? I thought i’d try here first before i’m forced to spend tons of money on taking her to a dog psychologist or something. And if we’re doing, or did something wrong in your opinion, let me know, because i’m not aware of it.

Tnx!

Oh, and if you wanna know anything else, just ask – we really need to find a solition here.