This is my 7th house dog and both hubby and I have trained many a working line dog for his job but this girl had me stumped.

She is currently 10 months old and had her first season last month. She's crate trained and was clean through the night from 9 weeks old. As she was progressing so well, by 6 months, we started to leave her crate door open through the night.

Hubby leaves for work at 6 and I get up at 8. For those two hours, he closes her in the crate so that she's not disturbing the other dogs and sleeps a little longer.

She goes to training twice a week and I exercise her daily along with brain draining work throughout the day.

Recently, she has started to eat the vynl flooring. What is she missing? She's doing it around 5am in the morning and won't do it all the time... She'll go through a fortnight of being fine and then does it again.

I can't find a pattern and I don't think it's diet related because of how randomly she does it.

By this age, all of our other dogs are free roaming in the house and can be trusted to be left out if I go shopping etc. What am I doing wrong with her?

The only times my lab decided to take up the vinyl flooring was when she felt a bit unsettled in the early hours and scrabbled near the kitchen door to try and get to me upstairs. Her claws scratched the vinyl which then tore and she decided to do pull it up and chew it. I’m hearing impaired so couldn’t hear her scrabble and she doesn’t bark either.

I did wonder if she's going back 'because its there' and 'fair game'.

She's definitely able to hold herself, if she needs to go and we live in a bungalow so will know if she wants to go out.

She's just been in a destructive and 'bloody madam' mood ever since her season.... Come to think of it, her foof is still swollen. Perhaps she's having a phantom?

Don't compare her to your other dogs - she isn't them!  You can have a lifetime of dogs with no problems and then have one with.  I see it often, and interestingly, I've seen it more with GSDs than any other breed (got two such cases on the go atm).

My first guess would be the season as it can do all sorts of things to their behaviour and personality while the hormones are changing.  But it could also be age, soreness somewhere - maybe a UTI following the season - something could have spooked her at that time of day so now she's getting anxious then, all manner of possibilities.

She's had a vet check since her season and been given the all clear..

Having looked at all the options though, I am leaning towards a possible phantom or lingering of hormone inbalance - I'll start her on some raspberry leaf tablets and have her rechecked. If it's still not resolved in a couple of weeks, I'll look at other factors.

I am not comparing her to my other dogs or the numerous dogs we have trained. I'm simply trying to work out if anything I have previously encountered can help me understand what's going on with this girl.

Always something new to learn :)