chewing

Question
hi my dog is a miniature Australian shepherd who is 9 and 1/2 months old. my husband is in the army and we were living in Washington state fore about 4 months of my dogs life. about a month and a half ago i moved home to Idaho to start working while my husband was in transition to getting out of army. at the moment i am living with my parents. they have two reg. Aussie and on border collie. he is adjusted to the new home and is apart of pack. he is little more high strung than my parents older Aussie but i just figured that was his age.
well after about a month of living at my parents home i would wake up in the morning to see that my puppy would have chewed up the wood corner flooring. i got mad at him but the next day i woke up to find he did it on the other side of the room. this time i decided to put red pepper seasoning on the wood. sense then he has not chewed on the wood. but this morning i woke up to find he has chewed up the blanket i was sleeping in. these aren't serious chewing but its the fact that its happening period and in my parents home. i don't know what to do he sleeps with two others dogs in my room plenty of toys, the door stays locked all night because i am afraid he will chew on something more important. as a side note when he was 4-5 months old in our old apartment he clawed the wall into the sheet rock, i disciplined him and he never did anything like that again until i moved home .  on the other side note he does have very bad separation anxiety he freaked out when ever i went  to work when we moved to Idaho but he was never destructive until i got home and was sleeping...... please i don't know what to do i feel like he is ruining my family home

Answer
The dog is nervous in the new environment, especially being left with "strangers" for the first time while you work, and chewing is one way dogs comfort themselves when they are anxious.  Couple that with his age, when most dogs have to chew things because they have entered the "second chewing stage" when the adult teeth need to be set deeply into the jaw, and you have a prescription for disaster.  A third problem is that if you are working he may not be getting the level of exercise or activity that he had before, and a bored dog will chew too.  Scolding is the LAST thing you want to do because as you have seen, it just lowers the likelihood of the behavior occurring UNTIL the dog is nervous enough to make it more comforting to chew in the present than to worry about punishment in the future.  Originally, I believe he did damage in the first teething stage because you gave him too much freedom in the house too soon. So, what to do.  If this were my dog, I would crate train him so that he could be contained while no one can watch him (that is so much easier to do in puppy hood, but can be done later - there are some great tutorials online for how to do it).  I would make sure he has plenty of exercise, but also of the mental variety.  You could feed him in his crate by using a food puzzle toy.  Or, if you have an area where you can let him out, but the other dogs can't go with him, you could spread his kibble around the yard and let him go "hunting" for it.  Aussies are a high energy breed that needs activity and to problem solve.  Agility lessons, or nosework classes, or even a good clicker training class can help you learn to communicate with this dog so that he's more a partner than a problem:-)  Good luck!