Our BM is right at about 18 months, doing great and just got a clean bill of health from the vet. We want to start keeping her out of her kennel while we are gone, but I'm afraid she has some minor separation anxiety. We initially tried at around 13 months. We started out leaving her for short periods and then went for a full day. The first two full days out of her kennel she was great. The third day she tore up some pillows and on the fourth day she chewed up the couch, fifth day tore up the bed so we decided it was to soon and went back to the kennel.She literally never gets into anything when we are home. She hasn't chewed up any shoes, pillows, or luckily couches when we are around and therefore its hard to teach her not to chew on those things when she never really does it. We offer her plenty of chew toys as well (Kong, ropes, etc.) We have a 7 year old lab pit mix that gets along great with her that we leave her with (he is never kept in a kennel). Also, when we are outside doing yard work but leave her alone she is totally fine as well. However, when we leave her in the kennel she will tear up any sort of bedding we put in there with her. Shes gone through probably 10 dog beds so we've began just putting towels in the kennel with her. She rips these up as well.Question is - how do we fix this problem? Should we wait until she it two to start trying to leave her out? I feel like we should start slowly allowing her the freedom to roam the house when we are gone, maybe an hour at at time. Just don't want to come home and find any more furniture completely destroyed. Also, want to add, she is my third dog - I've never had trouble with my other two when we have decided to leave them out of the kennel. We exercise her frequently as well, but do not over extend due to the nature of the breed. Not to mention she usually just lays down after about 10 - 15 minutes of running around.