u/whovian2304

Can anyone explain the psychology to help me understand this behavior. We moved to a rural property in February. My dog has been very well behaved indoors and our previous house had no fence so we only did leashed or staked time outside. Even then he wanted to sniff the wind and just exist in the sun. Now, at our new house, he has started shredded and chewing up things when he is left unattended outside. His leash/stake arrangement, a watering can, plant pots, plants, a boot, etc. We are on acreage with tons to smell on the wind and livestock to see from the yard. Why is he suddenly destroying things? He has toys/chews in the yard too and the daily amount of exercise hasn’t changed much from the old house. I really thought he would be more occupied at this property than the last. Is it anxiety at the new place(he doesn’t usually show separation anxiety)? Is he just getting happy and comfortable and showing some tendencies that he didn’t express before? He does seem to like this place a lot. It’s a little frustrating because I thought I could trust him with normal porch items and now I’m finding things destroyed. The solution is to just not give him access to anything but I want to understand why this is happening.

Hi all, I have questions about how to encourage my puppy to practice a healthy play style. We got our Basset baby Possum around 3-4 weeks ago(10 weeks old) and introduced him to our two adult bassets. The intros went well, they each warned up to him in their own ways over the last couple weeks. What really surprised me was that our more docile lady basset was the only one who really wanted to play with him at first. He loved it. And the only issue is now he won’t take no for an answer every time she walks by. She will growl and yell at him and nibble him, all with the body language “I don’t want to play right now”. But without actually hurting him it doesn’t seem to click for him and as soon as she lets him up from the correction he will bounce and bark right back at her with his tail going crazy. It’s clear she doesn’t want to play sometimes but he doesn’t get it. Now our other basset boy wants to play too, but not as often, so he doesn’t get pestered as much. Should I be stepping in and advocating for the adults? They are correcting him, he just doesn’t seem to get it. On another note, we took him to visit a friend’s nice dog for the first time a couple days ago and it went very well, until that dog was tired and Possum wouldn’t stop trying to play. Just chewing on her, bouncing, barking, trying to encourage play, when she was done. I distracted him and let the other dog have some space until we left. I know he’s young, but I’m concerned that uncorrected this will turn into a more bullying style of play that I have seen in other dogs in public parks before. As of right now he isn’t fully potty trained so he is tethered near me most of the day or out in the yard with his toys. When he is tethered I make sure that it is so that the adults can get some space from him. And half of the time they will come to him and initiate play. What should I be doing? We love to train and teach tricks here so if there is anything I can be teaching him here to help I will try! Thanks!