Pet Safety: Leaving Your Dogs Home Alone

Leaving your dogs alone in your home while you're gone requires a certain amount of trust. If you're not crating your dogs while you're out of the house, there's always the potential for unsafe or destructive habits to develop. I recently made the mistake of leaving the apartment for a few hours without crating Odin, the excitable Boxer. It's fortunate that nothing happened to Odin considering how much trouble he got into while he was gallivanting through the apartment.

We weren't gone for more than a few hours, but when my husband and I came home from a lovely dinner out, we stepped in it-literally. One of our dogs had escaped the confines of the kitchen. He was running all over the apartment with reckless abandon. Aside from his sudden desire to do his business on the floor, he'd run all over our clean laundry and there were papers everywhere!

This resulted in a few damaged keepsakes and hours spent re-doing laundry, but it could have been much worse. Things our curious Boxer didn't eat could have included accessible items such as sewing pins, electronics, cleaning products and chocolate. All of these things are particularly harmful to dogs, and we're fortunate that he avoided them. We could have prevented this catastrophe by taking a few simple steps.

Crate Training and Crating

Crate training usually occurs while the dog is a puppy. The crate is a safe and secure place, and dogs don't like to do their business in their own dens. As a result, crates are often used as potty training tools.

However, crates are necessary for dogs of all ages. Dogs feel safe and secure in crates once properly trained, and crates reduce the likelihood of dogs roaming about and interacting with unsafe items.

Odin is crate trained, but we wanted to leave him with his food when we left since it was time for his feeding. We usually leave him in his crate, but this time we opted to block him in the kitchen. We should have planned ahead and fed him earlier.

Safe Toys

A dog's toys can help a dog feel comfortable, but a dog should never be left alone with toys that could be harmful. If your dog has a habit of ripping apart and consuming toys, he should only have access to certain toys while supervised.

When we confine the dogs, we choose a toy that the dogs can use without observation or worry. This helps them stay occupied and get some exercise. While Odin avoided the toy when he got out, I'm sure it's prevented some destructive behavior at other times.

Dogproof Home

When we stepped out, we left a lot of items around that could have hurt our pets. We kept those items out of the kitchen (where the dogs were confined), but once Odin broke free, everything was up for grabs.

We could have done a decent job of generally dogproofing our home. If there's any possibility of a dog getting out, she shouldn't have access to cleaning products and chocolates, both of which can harm dogs. When we crate the dogs in our bedroom, we're now more conscientious about also shutting the bedroom door because we have unsafe items elsewhere in the apartment.

Even if Odin manages to escape again, he'll at least find himself confined to the bedroom, which has a limited amount of objects for him to eat. Sometimes it's hard for me to remember that dogs enjoy spending time in their crates when it's not used as a punishment and only for a limited amount of time. Next time I'm out of the apartment for a few hours, I'll crate both of our pets.