Does anyone here have any suggestions on how to get my puppy to stop chewing everything in sight?
We continually buy her toys to chew on, but she ruins them in about a day. She even completly chews through a rawhide bone in one day!
She likes to attack random papers, anything made of plastic, and other random things.
Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Hooves
Get the biggest cow hooves you can find. These take considerably longer for the little critter to gnaw through.
As a side note, beware the rawhide squares, these can be ingested in a partially consumed state and may plug the animal’s GI tract. The twists, knots or large pressed bones are preferrable. Under no circumstances ever give your animal any personal possession (like a shoe) to chew on, unless you want your wardrobe mutilated in short order.
Puppies chew. That’s their job. Puppy proof your house til s/he gets over it.
In the meantime - you might want to try a Kong - it’s a harder, hollow, rubber toy that you stuff with a Milkbone or two - my old dog like that. Cow hooves, as previously mentioned, work well, as do pigs ears.
Do NOT give him/her a hockey puck - you’ll be vacuuming the shredded bits for weeks 
I agree with the previous two suggestions. Just remember a puppt is kinda like a baby and it’s going thru its teething stage right now. It’ll stop eventually. Also, go to a pet supply store or ask a vet - I think they make sprays you can spray on what you don’t want the puppy to chew on. If the puppy tries to chew it, it’s either repulse by the smell or the taste.
This is also a good training opportunity. When the puppy starts chewing on something forbidden, tell her “NO!” firmly, then move her away and give her an approved toy. Praise her generously for chewing on her toy. Repeat ad nauseam.
Most important, praise, praise, praise when she is chewing on something she’s allowed to! Praising her is much more important and effective than the “NO!”, although used as needed, “NO!” reminds her what she cannot do.
And as in another current discussion, this is where crate training comes in. If you put approved toys in her crate, she learns from her time in there what she may chew on.
Good luck!
Didn’t someone say the price of puppy ownership is constant vigilence?
You and your family have to be aware of the pup at all times. And the previous posters summed it up. When she starts to chew on something wrong, a sharp “NO!”, followed by giving her the correct object. Meanwhile, you humans have to work extra hard at keeping your stuff put away. I remember my college roomate whose pup chewed the crothches out of all of her underwar. Or my daughter’s “physically challenged” Barbies. I hope the pup is not damaging wals, carpet, furniture, etc.
How old and what breed? While all puppies teethe, some breeds are more oral for longer periods than others.
From personal experience I can say that I have yet to find one of these products that work. Also, a puppy is not able to distinguish what are HER toys and what are items left on the floor. The only thing that works in puppy proofing your floor and vigilence.
Kiwi is pretty good about chewing. She has lots of toys and doesn’t seem interested in my clothes or shoes or furniture. She had a little paper fetish, so I am just careful not to leave stuff on the floor. And yes, PRAISE the puppy every time she does something good. Don’t just say NO when she does something bad. In order to get desireable behaviors out of her, reinforce them!
Michi
Yes, Phyllis is 10 months old and is still very oral. She likes to mouth our fingers and we often must correct her for biting. (Not hard, just using her teeth as part of the mouthing. We’re suckers – we allow her to kiss us, but we draw the line at biting, and she understands NO quite well.)
As for toys and other objects, she’s pretty good about only playing with her designated toys – at current count three rope-bones that she is in the process of dismantling, a large rubber ball, and two or three squeak toys. For the most part she leaves other things alone – although she is always supervised when loose in the house, and we do our best to keep things picked up, she does like to drag out the occasional sock. Or, like last night, several cardboard tampon applicators from the bathroom wastebasket. Ewwww. I also have a leather shoe (thankfully not the week-old, $120 Birkenstocks I had just bought) that succumbed to her teeth in the 2 minutes she had to get at it.
Oh, that puppy phase. I’d say it takes them three or four years to fully outgrow it.
Yes, get a Kong. They are incredibly wonderful red rubber toys that dogs can never (and when I say “never”, I mean you have to have a VERY determined dog to destroy one of these) get destroyed.
And when you say “NO!”, do NOT say the dog’s name. Hearing their name is a reward to them, so don’t give mixed signals.
Re: Cyndar’s comment about paper.
Daisy (4 y.o. golden retreiver) carries stuff around in her mouth all the time (dirty socks, dish towels, etc.) but never really chewed anything. Except when she was young and we left her alone, she would shred any paper product she could get hold of. (Really sucked when she pulled the calendar with all of our family’s appointments off the fridge.)
Somehow we figured out she was just making a point, and didn’t care whether she tore up one paper towel or an entire roll. So whenever we left her at home, we would be sure to leave one tissue or paper towel on the kitchen floor. She would shred that one piece, and be satisfied that she had made her point.
Also, thanks Cyndar for stressing the importance of positive feedback.
Have you tried that bitter apple spray? You had mentioned that you used a spray, but not what kind.
Puppy-proof the floor as best as you can.
And here’s where the one-on-one training comes in. My puppy used to love to run off with and chew up shoes left by the door. I just lined up the shoes with a couple of his chew-toys mixed in and sat and watched. He’d sniff a shoe and get a very stern “NO!” Remember, the sound of you saying “NO” has to be a bad thing for the dog; it has to be something that he doesn’t want to hear. Make it as angry and booming as you can.
After a few tries, he’d go for one of his toys instead of a shoe, and he would get lavish praise from me (not food, though). It’s a simplistic lesson: shoes = bad dog, chew-toys = good dog. The whole trick is repetition and consistancy. You have to do this over and over and over, and you have to be consistant about it (biting shoes is always bad, biting chew-toys is always good).
You kind of have to be almost bipolar in nature. You can find yourself praising the dog, and then yelling at him five seconds later. But that’s how you have to be. You have to catch the puppy in the act (of either being bad or good) in order for it to register to him. And make sure that your signals are clear: be stern when scolding him, but be very affectionate when praising.
It takes time, but it can be done.
Oh, and if a sharp “NO!” doesn’t work, try filling a can with pennies and putting the can inside of a sock. Basically, you’ll have a “noise bomb” that you can toss near the dog when he’s being bad (putting it inside the sock is to avoid gashing up your floors and walls). If that doesn’t work, you can always do the old “time out” routine.
Kong and hooves are very good suggestions. Kongs come in many different shapes and sizes.
Couple things that haven’t been mentioned yet: NYLABONES. Even better than Kongs. Come in two different materials–hard and not-quite-so-hard–and probably dozens of shapes designed specifically to be chewed: great knobs and things.
Also, wear your puppy out. Play her to sleep.
And keep her in her crate when you can’t supervise. The key to this kind of training is to help her avoid opportunities to make the wrong choice; keep her from temptation. She will learn good habits instead of having later to unlearn bad habits.
I have a dog with chompers from hell. She is a female rottweiler and is one year and six months old. I don’t know if she is still considered a puppy, but I still call her a puppy. Anyway my dog has tons of chew toys. Her most favorite toy to chew on in the house is a giant piece of rope. She also likes her Kong and rubber steak. Unfortunately, when she is outside she doesn’t like these toys. I have often joked that she would be a good dog to drop off at an enemy’s home. Why you ask? Well…
My dog eats cars - literally. Not the little matchbox cars I’m talking about big ones. She has pulled license plates off of cars that parked in our driveway. She chewed off the ‘Spirt’ word on the back of my Dodge Spirt. My doors no longer have rubber molding on them as she has pulled them off. She let the air out of my brothers tires by chewing up the valve stems. She chewed up the wooden lattice on the deck and now it has been replaced with the plastic lattice. She seems to be leaving that alone. I came home from work yesterday and plugged in the Christmas lights. Only a few of them worked. She had chewed up almost every extension cord. She likes to walk past the giant light bulbs and pop them in her mouth. She pulled the phone line off the side of the house and chewed that up. We had pumpkins on the front porch for Halloween but she carried those around the yard like tennis balls. Oh, her favorite toy is a big log that she drags off of the wood pile. One time when she was swinging the log around it fell on her paw. She yelped and then got all pissed off and started attacking the log. She is a very strange dog.
Okay, how have I tried breaking her of this? Well, I have tried doing the whole “NO!” bit to her and that works for about a month. I have sprinkled pepper, chili powder and cayun pepper on the objects that she likes to chew on. I then went inside the house and watched her. She walked over to the plants that I sprinkled them and and proceeded to lick all of the pepper off the plant and then started eating the plant. I’ll tell you something. That dog is a mutant.
If you would like to see some pictures of my cute little mutant dog go to http://w3.one.net/~unibrow/Denali/Denali.htm
Thanks for all the suggestions. But here’s the thing, we have tried just about all of them. Sophie is a one year old golden with s LOT of energy. We wonder if we should hav egotten a lab, because our friends have TWO one-year old labs, and they seem less of a hassle than our one golden.
Anyway, getting to the point. She has a kong, she doesn’t use it, though, unless we fill it with peanut butter. That keeps her busy for half an hour or so getting it all out, then back to whatever else she can chew.
I will try that hoove idea, seeing as they seem to last longer than rawhide.
We’ve tried the spray (even the green apple kind) and that doesn’t work. Fortunatly, she doesn’t chew on the woodwork anymore.
She likes socks. She doesn’t chew them, she carries them around in her mouth. They only get ruined when you try yo take them away from her. She has the strongest Goddamn jaws I’v eever seen. If you try to take something that’s hers, she’ll win, with significant damage to whatever the hell you are trying to get.
Well, thanks again for all the help.
Work on teaching her to Drop it. Labs and goldens generally are bred to have “soft mouths”, but are also very oral. Don’t get in a tug of war with her with anything other than one of her toys. IMO drop it is one of the most valuable commands to teach a dog - whether it has something of yours in its mouth, or you see it pick something up outside. Make her drop it, and then you can figure out what it is and if it is okay for her to have it in her mouth.
Have you firmly established your dominance over Sophie? (Cool name, BTW!) Here’s something that worked for me. Say Sophie has a sock. You tell her to drop it. If she refuses, DO NOT grab the sock. She will think you want to play that fun tug-of-war game. Instead
-get ahold of her collar.
-get down to her level (tho slightly higher)
-look right in her eyes
-repeat the command in a low, serious, almost growling tone while just putting a little pressure on the sock. Don’t pull on the sock, but instead, put your finger between her teeth BEHIND the sock, and essentially push it out. This would also be a time to add in any command of emphasis you use, such as NOW.
If she still doesn’t drop it, you can emphasize a couple of different ways. Repeat the command while you
-tap the side of her snout with one finger.
-what seemed to really work for me is to open your mouth and actually place it over the end of her snout. Ever see dogs do this to each other when establishing dominance? Don’t bite her or anything. Make it so she’s just basically breathing your exhalation. I would be surprised if she failed to drop the item then.
-another dominance ploy is to lift her so both front legs leave the ground.
If any of these lead her to drop the object, lavish her with effusive praise, give her a treat, hugs and kisses, play tug of was with her chewy toy, whatever.
Then repeat a jillion or 2 times as necessary.
My other mandatory commands are No and Move. Course, that’s just how I like my dogs to behave. With No, the dog stops whatever it is doing, whether it is jumping on a visitor, chewing a sock, or taking a whizz. Move just means go somewhere other than where you are. You can get fancy and work on other room if you like. Also Come here and an all purpose emphasizer like Right now!
Sit and Stay are also, good, but less useful in how I am with dogs. Add in Quiet, and that’s about all I ask of a dog. Mrs D and the kids add in bullshit like Kisses, and Roll over. Oh yeah. Daisy brings in the paper, too.
How much do you work her? Every day? For how long? I’m not trying to suggest you aren’t doing it right. I’m just asking. It doesn’t come easy. Just the 7 or so commands I mention, to get the dog to follow all of them faithfully, and walk well on a leash, takes a hell of a lot of work. Also consistency by all members of your family.
Another thing to do is to get her used to you doing basically whatever you want with her body. If you want to open her jaws at any time, you should be able to. You should be able to palpate the pads on her paws, check out her ears and butt, and she should accept that as your prerogative. Again, lavish praise when she cooperates. Your vet will thank you. And it really comes in handy should Sophie ever injure herself and you are trying to diagnose/treat in an emergency. So once a day or so, make her lie down and check out her ears, eyes, teeth, feet, etc. See, my last few dogs would love to play tug of war with them, but if I ever put my hands on their jaws to open them, you’d better believe they’d open up! It was just never a question. It never crossed my mind that they had a choice, and I believe as a result, they accepted that they did not have a choice.
Don’t second guess the breed. I’ve known some labs that were holy terors - in fact, overall the labs I have known have caused more chewing damage for longer periods than the goldens. But that is just my limited experience.
Wish I could have been of more help.
This might be a new fad but I have noticed people people buying stuff animals [thrift shops have plenty of them] to give to their canines. Some canines play with them, most keep them as some kind of companion & carry them around with them, like yours does the sock. cute.
You could crate her though. They can’t chew when they are in a crate.
My mom’s dog (a seven-year-old Golden) loves stuffed animals. She doesn’t rip them up. She carries them around the house and the toys get REALLY disgusting and slobbery and you really don’t want to step on one in the dark, but she is very gentle with them.
I will never forget last Christmas when I pulled one of my gifts out of a box – a lizard Beanie Baby, chosen because of the lizard theme and not because I collect the things – and instantly there was 80 pounds of immensely hopeful Golden sitting in front of me, just knowing that that was another toy for her to carry around the house!
I have no idea if she was a real chewy puppy because she was adopted as an adult, but to watch her carrying my old stuffed Garfield around the house is hilarious.