"Don't leave home without me!"

Millie would prefer another way to express the ad man's view of "Don't leave home without it!" She demands that we take HER along whenever we leave home. The dog medical community has already labeled this, "Separation anxiety," and suggests many ways to deal with it.

Millie, a six-year-old German Shepherd-Laborador mix, let us know about it shortly after we adopted her from the Helen Woodward Animal Center last year. It was the night I took my spouse Barbara out for a birthday dinner.

Millie greeted us greedily -- with anxiety, yes -- when we got home. She had torn the dry wall out from the area next to the entrance to our garage from the laundry room. Plaster all over the place. Scratches on the door.

Born in the millennium year, which is why we nmed her Millie, we thought she ought to behave less "puppyly" at five. Don't they say that you multiply a dog's life by seven years to measure her maturity. My goodness. she should behave like a 35-year-old when we got her!

Once we thought the healing process was working after we began leaving her alone for three minutes, then five minutes, then -- at 20 minutes -- kerplunk! The door was torn asunder again.

Oh, we've been advised many ways to attain a cure: Put her in a cage when you leave home. Hmmm. Does imprisonment cure a human being unless he gets rehabilitation?

We didn't cage Millie. We gave her a prescriptive medicine that was supposed to ease anxiety. More than a year later we're still giving her the medicine.

In the meantime, she has chewed four seat belts asunder in our van on four separate occasions when we left her alone in the car. Toyota has benefited by up to $800. Millie hasn't chewed a seat belt since we began spraying ithem with a noxious substance.

I will welcome recommendations -- short of euthanasia -- from anyone who reads this.