[Tesseract]

First, I would like to greet all of you, as this is my first post on this forum! I have read a few threads and you all seem to be very kind and genuinely caring.

I have a young 5 month old Yorkie (this is my first dog as well), who is currently being pen trained with a wee wee pad. Lately, he has developed a rather concerning and disgusting habit of eating *specifically* the urine covered area of his pad when he is alone. I'm assuming this is a separation anxiety/frustration habit, as he only does it after we are gone for a few hours. It started off with pad pulling, escalated to pad shredding, and has now become ingesting the cotton that he has peed on (with no shredding or debris anywhere, as he eats all of it, and only the peed on areas). This has been going on for two or three weeks. The only effects I'm seeing front this behavior is a disgruntled tummy and the pad in his stool, but I am still concerned about potential damage he may be doing to himself. I cannot find this issue anywhere else online, so I'm not sure how common this may be.

Does anyone have any idea how I'd go about addressing this? It is very cold where I live so I don't have the option of outdoor training him at this time. I have tried to bring him outside recently, but he starts shaking violently as soon as his feet hit the ground. We were told not to expose him to outdoors until he finished his vaccinations, and that wasn't until a few weeks ago, so he's only been outside once. Please, any advice is greatly appreciated!