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How to Stop Your Dog From Chewing: An Expert’s Take

How to Stop Your Dog From Chewing: An Expert’s Take

Dogs will be in the mood to chew different types of textures at different times, for example, they may be into a soft couch material one day and onto a hard wooden chair or table leg the next. That is why it is important to always have different types of chew toys around to cover the needs of whatever different chewing mood your dog is in. Dogs learn much better when shown how to do something rather than made to do something, so please resist the urge to pull things away from your dog unless at course it is for their own safety or to protect personal property.

Chihuahua puppy facing with a bone in the mouth, isolated on white

One Reason Dogs Chew

One of the main reasons your dog could be excessively chewing people, furniture and or belongings is because they are a young puppy and are teething. This is only a possible reason if your dog is young and its teeth have yet to grow in completely. Chewing on things or just generally having something in their mouths helps puppies to relieve pressure and soreness as their teeth develop. To help make this time easier on your pup it would be wise to have lots of chew toys around for them to use when they are in need of relief.

The Other Reason Dogs Chew

The reason your older dog might still be chewing things up around the house, are behaving this way because they are bored, under exercised, a combination of the two, or when if it occurs when you leave your dog separation anxiety. Chewing seems to really pass the time for dogs, you may have noticed this when giving your dog a frozen bone and they completely forget you exist for the duration of that bone. This is because as we said earlier, time really flies by for dogs when they are chewing something and also find it quite enjoyable.

Control the Chewing

If you catch your dog in the middle of chewing something that they are not supposed to instead of pulling your dog away from the object or forcefully pulling the item out of their mouth, get your dog to stop chewing it voluntarily. Do this by getting your dogs attention on you either verbally or with gestures and if they leave it alone reward them a treat. Keep in mind you can also replace the item your dog was chewing with an acceptable chew toy, and to start very close to your dog as you first start to try and grab their attention.

Front view of a Beagle puppy playing with a tennis ball, isolated on white

Reinforced Behaviour

It is not good enough to only correct your dog’s bad behaviour as it happens, you need to show your dog how to leave other household items alone by having designated training sessions. A good exercise to practice this would be to place or throw items, like your wallet, clothing, books, or pillows around your dog, now tell your dog to leave the item verbally before they get a chance to go for it and reward upon success. Doing this with many different household items will really help your dog to understand that they can’t just pick up anything they want to. 

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Urban Pets Universe is a Canadian based Pets Community and Online Pet Supply Store. We manufacture and sell a wide variety of products at our online website store as well as on Amazon – including our line of deshedding and massaging gloves, hair cleaners and others.

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  • Loyce Ellinghuysen Reply

    This blog How to Stop Your Dog From Chewing: An Experts Take – Urban Pets Universe
    has helped me a lot with my dog. Also, I used this training course
    https://s96.me/dog-training-course and now my dog ​​follows everything I ask.
    Kiss you All!

    February 22, 2020 at 11:55 am

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