How to Teach a Puppy Good Chew Habits

It's a fact of life. Puppies chew. It's a perfectly normal behavior that's as much a part of your puppy as the wistful eyes and appealing expression he first used to steal your heart. Your puppy uses his mouth much like we use our hands and fingers--to explore his new world, grasp toys and food, and to relieve boredom and anxiety. Once you accept that chewing is a natural and healthy behavior, the next step is to teach your pup to enjoy chewing chew toys more than he enjoys chewing household items. The following guidelines will help you teach your puppy good chewing habits from the start.

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Crate
• Bedding
• Chew toys
• Treats

Reinforcing Good Chewing Habits

1. 
    
   Enjoying a good chew with an appropriate chew toy.

   When you are away from home or are too busy to give your undivided attention, keep your puppy confined to a doggy den (or crate) with a comfortable bed and plenty of chew toys to keep him occupied. This teaches him to settle down quietly and calmly with an appropriate--and the only available--chewable object, which establishes good habits from the outset.

2. Provide your puppy with a variety of fun and stimulating chew toys both inside and outside of her crate. Introduce her to each new toy and use them during long periods of play activity. Praise your puppy frequently for choosing--and using--proper chew toys. She'll soon begin to associate them with fun and rewarding interactions with you, which further reinforces appropriate chewing behavior.

3. 
    
   A stuffed chew toy will keep your puppy busy for hours.

   Hollow chew toys, such as Kong products that can be stuffed with favorite treats or kibble, will have your puppy addicted to chew toys in no time! The basic principle behind chew toy stuffing is that as bits of treat or kibble gradually come out during a prolonged chewing session, your puppy is periodically rewarded for continuing to chew.Instead of giving your puppy his entire daily allotment of kibble in a food bowl, try stuffing a portion of it into several hollow chew toys and placing them in his crate instead. Your puppy will be entertained for hours as he focuses on extracting the food--and not on destroying his bedding, his crate or his other toys.

4. 
    
   Keep your puppy entertained with a variety of toys

   Just as young children get bored playing with the same toys over and over, puppies get bored too. Keeping an assortment of chew toys on hand and rotating them frequently helps maintain your puppy's enthusiasm and keeps her engaged.

5. If you catch your puppy chewing on an inappropriate item, find a rolled up newspaper and give yourself a smack! Chewing mistakes are easily avoidable. Shoes and other household articles are irresistible to puppies. These objects should be kept safely out of reach while your puppy is learning what is appropriate and what is not appropriate to chew.A common mistake is to punish the pup when he makes a chewing mistake. Instead, use kibble or a treat as a lure to "swap" the inappropriate item for a more appropriate chew toy. The idea is to make the chew toy more attractive than the object your puppy isn't supposed to chew on.

Tips & Warnings

• Once your puppy has not had an inappropriate chewing incident for at least a month, you can expand his play area from one room to two. For each subsequent month without a chewing mistake, you may give your puppy access to another room until he eventually has free run of the house. Should a chewing mistake occur, go back to the original one-room play area for another month and start over again.
• Never allow your puppy to have unsupervised play with a squeaky toy. They're easy to destroy and the inner parts can be swallowed.

Resources

• Learn more about Kong chew toys

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