Is Your Dog Chewing Everything?
Learning how to stop a dog from chewing everything is not that complicated.
Although you see your pet chewing on stuff left and right, it’s always important to be attentive and come up with methods that will push him away from such an activity.
That might be a lot harder than you imagine, especially at first.
This is a simple fix but will only work if you are consistent.
It will take a bit of time but eventually, your dog will understand what is going on and they will get to understand what YOU want them to do.
Stick with the following help and guidelines and you will master this without too much difficulty.
Dogs love chewing, it’s part of their DNA to chew, so we can’t completely eradicate it from their lives, but similarly, we don’t want them to think that everything inside this new alien environment has “EAT ME” written on it.
You only have to look online and see the literal thousands of chew toys that are available and although they are good at what they do, we need to quickly get our dogs to associate with their chew toy rather than the leg of Aunt Agatha’s antique 100-year-old Cabinet that you inherited when the poor old girl passed away!
But here you have some tips to keep in mind.
Confine your pet to a crate or a small room
Of course, that room should have no items to chew on.
This way you will learn how to stop a dog from chewing furniture and other items in no time.
It works very well, and you can adapt and adjust this to your own requirements.
It’s really important to remember that if you are going to go down the route of having a crate for your pet pooch then the crate you get must be of adequate size for them to feel comfortable inside.
Dogs like to feel safe and secure and as long as there is fresh water available inside, a soft clean blanket is placed on the bottom of the cage, all is good.
Dogs generally do not like to foul where they sleep so a cage can also be great for toilet training your dog too, but we will look at that in another article.
You can use the crate for a number of things including making the dog know that it is their own private domain, making it comfortable with chew toys, blankets on the top to keep it a bit darker helps especially at night and a few treats scattered inside daily will certainly get your dog to feel happy going inside.
If you are doing this with a new dog it works much better than trying to get a dog that is used to sleeping on the couch or by the fire to associate with the crate or cage, but it still can be done.
Design a variety of activities for your pet
Sometimes, the best way to figure out how to stop a dog from chewing on things is to keep him busy.
Most of the time puppies and even older dogs will chew on items because they are bored and alone.( a bit more about this later!)
Avoid those things, and the results can be very impressive.
Dogs like to rest a lot, especially Greyhounds like my boy, so a good dog owner will always be thinking about the needs of the animal, so if you do see your dog looking a bit fidgety, then it’s usually the sign that they need a walk to burn off that energy.
Don’t ignore your dog when they obviously want to do something, because essentially the chewing is a way for them to get some “action”
Get a dog toy
You can associate the feeling of chewing with a toy.
This way, whenever your pet wants to chew on something, he will chew on his toy.
However, picking the right chewing toy is very important. You want one that’s not super small and a safety hazard. The chew toy should also be non-damaging for your pet’s teeth.
Once you do that, you will know how to stop a dog from chewing everything very quickly.
As I stated before, there are some really clever chew toys too on the market and some you can pop treats inside and this gives your dog a good “chew work out” for their jaw and will often leave them pretty tired as a result.
Interrupt the chewing process and divert your dog to something else
This makes a lot of sense because you can figure out how to stop a dog from chewing everything just by stopping him and moving on to another activity.
Of course, that activity needs to be compelling enough to take your pet away from furniture or whatever he was chewing.
A bit of trial and error is needed here, but results can be great and that’s what matters the most.
If you catch your dog chewing something you don’t want them to chew, it is always best to low key your response and simply stop them chewing what they are chewing by redirecting them to their chew toy.
Remember, if you have been reading our blog articles before this one about becoming the “The Alpha” in your pack, it is YOU who is in charge here, so redirecting your dog will not be a problem.
Again, this takes practice but it can be easily achieved with repetition and consistency.
Make your pet exercise on a daily basis
Ideally, you want to keep your pet occupied, and exercising is a very good idea. It removes boredom, increases energy levels, and it can be the best idea on how to stop a dog from chewing on things.
It works for most pets, even puppies like it.
As I stated earlier, most times it’s a build-up of energy, boredom or anxiety that makes our dogs chew the wrong things.
If you can avoid these things as much as possible, you will not have the chewing problem much or indeed at all.
My boy Wilson doesn’t chew anything, not even his chew toys, but all dogs are different, so this approach you may need to use or you may never need to use it, but it is certainly good to know.
The Best Guide To Destructive Chewing
This great video and transcript will help you understand the science behind chewing.
Destructive Chewing? How Do We Stop It?
Well, first we got to understand why dogs are destructive and do that kind of chewing in the first place?
And the answer is quite simple, actually. They’re bored!
Yep, says, when you don’t tell your dog what you want him to do, he will find something to do to entertain himself, that could be chewing up your shoes, chewing up your bed, chewing up the door jam.
So we need to be able, if you’re struggling with a dog who’s you know, has destructive chewing, we need to find a way to say to the dog, hey, this is what I want you to do.
All right.
And the best way to do that is with puzzle toys, toys that you can put food into.
And that will keep your dog busy.
When you take a Kong or a busy buddy with food stuffed in there and hand it to your dog toy with food is always going to outweigh shoe or door jam or couch right?
Food is the highest priority dog and that’s much more exciting than chewing on furniture.
So we first thing we want to do with destructive chewing is making sure the dog is not bored.
We want to give them options of toys to play with. And just regular toys usually won’t do it because unless there’s someone’s interaction with a dog, they’re boring toys.
Food, however, is great mental stimulation that gets the dog tired.
But they entice the dog to play with it because they have to work to get the food out. All right.
A couple of things you can do are pull toys, take a puzzle toy, shove food in there, run just the dog’s regular kibble, and then run it under hot water.
So the kibble gets nice and soggy and swells up and takes the whole toy, you put it into the freezer with the kibble inside, you pull it out the next day.
And now you’ve frozen kibble inside there, it’s much much harder for the dog to get it out, it’ll last much longer.
And your dog will love having that frozen treat bone, you can do bones for dogs, okay.
Now here’s the thing about bones to remember.
- Always raw, okay, we never, ever give dog dogs cooked bones.
- Because cooked bones can splinter.
- And they can and other dogs can choke on them.
So if you’re going to give your dog bones to chew on, always raw, and always give him a bigger size and you think he should have because again, we don’t want to risk consuming hazard.
Bones are also much higher value than the shoe or the couch, or you know, the table leg!
Destructive chewing a big part of it comes down to basically, you know, in a way the dog understands saying this is what we want you to do. We want you to chew on this.
Not that we want you to chew on this. Not that, okay?
Now, here’s another part of destructive children. Sometimes the boredom part, the destructive chewing is essentially our human’s fault because we’re allowing our dog to be bored.
But there’s also another part that you know comes into play is that we can be messy sometimes. So clean up.
I mean, that’s, that’s the biggest thing. I used to be the messiest person before I got my dog.
My old one before I had my dog, you could never see the floor in my house. I was such a mess.
But when I brought home that eight-week-old puppy, who would put everything in his mouth and destroy anything that I left out, but when he was unsupervised, I became the cleanest person you will ever meet.
And even now, I’m the same way because he will destroy stuff. If I leave it out. Dogs can’t differentiate. And this is why when puzzle toys with food come in so well.
You know, especially people with children, dogs can really differentiate Is this my toy is this, you know, the kids toy when there’s food and however, it becomes very easy to know.
Yeah, this toy with food. Yeah, that’s mine. All right.
So part of is cleaning up because if you, you know have a mess going, then you’re here, enticing the dog to pick something to destroy.
Okay. Now, if you notice that there are very specific locations that for whatever reason your dog just continually goes back to you could try the detergent sprays, okay?
I mean, we’re gonna call them bitter springs, because that’s pretty much what they are and the other really nasty, bitter taste.
Don’t ever get it you know, on your own mouth because it tastes disgusting if I know what it tastes like is not good.
The bitter spray is usually a water-based spray. So let’s say your dog chewed on the table. I can be sprayed on the table late.
Next time the dog goes over. He licks and goes “gross”. And he goes away.
Okay, there’s another one you can use bitter, the bitter spray hot sauce.
I’ve actually used this before like Tabasco, small amounts, hot sauce, same thing.
Sometimes the hot sauce is more effective in against this for them chewing on a specific thing.
Compare the hot sauce is super effective because just the smell of dogs noses are so sensitive, that sometimes just the smell can be determined.
They don’t even have to lick it to be deterred. Okay?
So you can try some of those things if they are continually chewing on one spot.
And if you catch him in the act, you can do timeout as well.
But the main thing with destructive chewing: Don’t let your dogs get bored!
That’s what it comes down to keep everything clean.
So there’s not you know, anything that is enticing the dog to destroy. And then give tell the dog what you want him to do.
Dogs not a minor he doesn’t know. Naturally. That shoes are not okay. Right?
But he has a toy full of food. That’s a very clear signal that okay, this must be for me. All right.
Conclusion
Figuring out how to stop a dog from chewing everything might seem overwhelming at first, but it all comes down to patience and experimentation.
Not all dogs are the same, which means some ideas above will work great, others less so.
But you have to be consistent and focus on helping your pet, and these ideas will come in handy!
You are learning new skills and you are getting an understanding of how our dogs think and act and this information is great for you to share with other dog owners who really might have a problem with this sort of thing.
We recommend you make sure that your pet always has some sort of activity and distraction.
Just take that into consideration and make sure that you divert your pet’s attention every time he chews on stuff.
You can also buy pet toys too, they look great and even if they don’t use them much, they are there if needed!
Just remember, keep it simple and consistent and you will get great results.
Thanks for reading!
