Training & Behavior

You come home and the corner of the sofa has been renovated. Stuffing everywhere, one cushion missing entirely, and the dog is greeting you at the door with the enthusiasm of someone who has had an excellent afternoon.

The temptation is to see this as naughtiness. It almost never is. Chewing is a normal, necessary dog behaviour, and destructive chewing is that normal behaviour pointed at the wrong objects for one of a handful of identifiable reasons. Work out which reason applies and the fix becomes obvious.

Reason one: teething

Puppies between roughly three and seven months are losing baby teeth and pushing adult teeth through inflamed gums. Chewing relieves that discomfort in the same way teething rings help babies. This is not optional behaviour for them.

The answer is not to stop the chewing but to redirect it. Provide a range of textures: soft rubber, rope, and something you can freeze. A wet flannel twisted and frozen is a cheap and very effective teething toy. Frozen carrot works too for many puppies.

Manage the environment at the same time. Puppy-proof properly, use baby gates, and supervise or crate when you cannot watch. Expecting a four-month-old puppy to make good decisions alone in a living room full of interesting objects is optimistic.

Teething chewing fades naturally by around seven or eight months, though a second phase of heavy chewing often appears between six and eighteen months as adult teeth settle and adolescence arrives.

Reason two: boredom and under-stimulation

This is the largest category by some margin, particularly in working breeds. A Border Collie, a Spaniel, a Belgian Malinois or a young Labrador given one short walk a day and nothing to think about will find its own project, and your kitchen units are the nearest available material.

Physical exercise alone often is not the answer. Owners who respond by running the dog further sometimes create a fitter dog with the same problem. Mental work is more tiring than physical work for most dogs.

Effective options: feed every meal from a puzzle feeder or scatter it across the lawn, do two five-minute training sessions daily, allow long sniffing walks where the dog chooses the route and pace rather than route marches, and rotate toys weekly so they stay novel.

Give appropriate chew items daily, not occasionally. Chewing releases endorphins and is genuinely calming. A dog with a proper chewing outlet is less likely to invent one.

You can usually tell boredom chewing apart from anxiety chewing by where it happens. Bored dogs chew whatever is interesting, often in the middle of a room, and are typically relaxed the rest of the time.

Reason three: separation anxiety

Anxiety chewing has a distinct signature. It happens only when the dog is alone, and it concentrates on exit points: door frames, window sills, the edges of crates, carpet by the front door. There is often accompanying drooling, panting, vocalising, house soiling and refusal to eat while alone. Damaged paws and broken teeth are common, because the dog is genuinely trying to escape rather than idly gnawing.

This is a panic disorder, not disobedience, and punishment makes it substantially worse. So does simply providing more toys, since an anxious dog cannot settle enough to use them.

The approach is graduated desensitisation to being alone: leaving for seconds, then a minute, then several, building tolerance below the threshold where panic starts. Departure cues like picking up keys need decoupling by doing them repeatedly without leaving. A camera helps enormously, because it tells you exactly when the distress starts, and that is usually within the first ten minutes.

Severe cases benefit from veterinary involvement, and anti-anxiety medication alongside behaviour work has a much better success rate than behaviour work alone in dogs that are truly panicking. Get a qualified behaviourist involved rather than working from internet advice, because badly executed desensitisation can sensitise the dog further.

Reason four: stress that has nothing to do with being alone

Some chewing is displacement behaviour, a way of coping with tension. Building work next door, a new baby, a change of routine, a frightening incident, or ongoing conflict with another pet can all produce it.

Look at what changed in the week the chewing started. Fixing the underlying stressor, or giving the dog a quiet retreat away from it, resolves this more reliably than any training.

Reason five: it worked

Occasionally chewing is maintained by attention. The dog picks up a shoe, the human leaps up, there is a chase, everybody is very animated. From the dog's point of view that is an excellent outcome, and it will be repeated.

The fix is management plus a boring response. Trade the item calmly for a treat, put the shoes away, and give attention generously at other times so the dog does not need to steal it.

Choosing chew items safely

Not everything sold as a dog chew is a good idea. The rule of thumb is that if you cannot make a dent in it with your thumbnail, or you would not want it dropped on your kneecap, it is hard enough to fracture teeth. Antlers, hard nylon bones and cooked bones are common causes of slab fractures on the upper carnassial teeth, and repairing or extracting those is expensive.

Rawhide carries choking and obstruction risk when large pieces are swallowed. Sticks splinter and cause mouth injuries. Tennis balls have an abrasive surface that wears teeth down over time.

Better choices include sturdy rubber toys that can be stuffed and frozen, softer rubber chews with some give, appropriately sized natural chews given under supervision, and edible dental chews sized for the dog. Whatever you choose, supervise, and remove anything small enough to swallow.

What not to do

Do not punish after the fact. A dog cannot connect your annoyance with something it did two hours ago, and the guilty look everyone recognises is appeasement in response to your body language, not remorse.

Do not use bitter sprays as your only strategy. They deter some dogs, are ignored by others, and they address nothing about the underlying cause.

Do not assume the dog will grow out of it. Some do, but a behaviour that has been practised for a year is a habit, and habits need replacing rather than waiting out.

Do manage the environment while you work on the cause. Every successful chewing session on a sofa arm rehearses the behaviour. Remove the opportunity, provide better alternatives, meet the dog's actual needs, and the sofa stops being interesting.