How to Help Teething Puppies

Your puppy should grow in his full set of baby teeth by the time he is 8 weeks old. Puppies have 28 teeth, with 14 on the top and 14 on the bottom. Between the ages of 2 and 7 months, your puppy looses his baby teeth and they are replaced with his permanent set of adult teeth. Adult dogs have 42 teeth, 21 on both top and bottom.

Instructions

Difficulty: Easy

1. Purchase several chew toys for your puppy. Chewing massages the puppy's gums. This reduces the pain that he is experiencing from teething. It also helps to loosen the puppy teeth so they can come out and breaks the skin on the gum to allow the adult tooth to come in.
2. Freeze the chew toys before giving them to your puppy. The cold helps to ease the pain and swelling that comes with teething.
3. Wet a clean cloth and put it in the freezer. Give the frozen cloth to your puppy to chew on. Be sure to supervise your puppy while she is chewing on the cloth and take it away from her if she starts to shred it or eat it.
4. Pick up anything in the house that you do not want the puppy to chew on. Like a child that is teething, a puppy chews on anything he can get his mouth on. Puppy proof you house by putting everything that is harmful to the puppy and anything you do not want chewed, out of his reach.
5. Put your teething puppy into a crate when you are not able to supervise her. Be sure to put chew toys into the crate with her. Crating her when you can not watch her prevents her from chewing things that she shouldn't.

Tips & Warnings

• It is alright to help a puppy loosen a baby tooth so it can fall out if it seems the tooth is having trouble coming out on it's own. Much like you would help a child loosen a baby tooth. Wiggle the tooth back and forth to help it fall out.
• Bring your puppy to the veterinarian if the puppy teeth are not coming out and you are not able to help them come out by wiggling them. The vet might need to extract the teeth to allow adult teeth to grow in straight.