I think your wife was right.

Look, I have two high-energy dogs. I have a Husky and a Border Collie/Whippet mix. And I've lived with them in a small, one-bedroom apartment. One from a breeder, the other was a rescue. I've also taken in three rescue puppies in the last few months.

I would have returned that dog. Okay, no, I'd have spent thousands on a trainer because I can, but outside of that I would have returned the dog. That was not a good fit for your family. Not every rescue dog is a fit and rescues understand that. Hell, foster families return the fosters they get all the time. We swap out dogs when someone has a dog with a behavioral problem that doesn't gel with the household.

Anytime we would leave home (which was 2 hours at the most this week), he would destroy everything.

This is very unusual and you did everything right. You provided positive chewing objects. You were meeting his energy needs. No back yard was going to fix that.

He would bark loudly and annoy the neighbors the whole time we were gone. I got about 30 minutes of sleep each night this week because he would just walk around the apartment, or make loud noises during the night.

This is some pretty extreme anxiety. Yes, you might have gone to the vet for puppy anxiety meds. Or, you know, you have an anxious dog. And maybe nothing was really going to change for him in the long term. Or not on enough of a time frame to make keeping him reasonable.

I wanted to keep him for at least a month and let him adjust.

Maaaaaybe. Maybe things would have chilled out. But some dogs are just a bad fit. There are a thousand and one dogs that would have chilled out right away, found their routine, shown progress at least. This dog sounds like a mess to me and there are people who can take those on, but they are more experienced dog owners with more support in place. Not you two.

I think the right dog might be a great thing. You can clearly meet the energy needs of a dog and you are both animal lovers. Just because you adopted one that didn't fit for your family doesn't make your wife an idiot. In fact, she might have been the wise one to recognize early and often that this wasn't going to work out. You're right, you can't expect perfection right off the bat, but there's some behavioral quirks and then there's RED FLAGS. Those, to me, are red flags. Just because you understand a rescue has certain needs doesn't mean you can foresee them or that you're even equipped to deal with them.

I think you're being irrationally hard on her choice.