Chewing

[worrywart]

I have a Old English Sheepdog who is 11 months old and loves to chew up everything in site especially furniture. We have tried punishing him but that isn't working he just keeps on chewing. The products you can buy in the pet stores to stop dogs from chewing doesn't work, now I need help from someone else with him. Any help you can give me with him would be greatly appreciated.
Thank You
Sharon

[Karen]

Have you given him more attractive alternatives? Someone else may know if he's at the stage where he's teething, eleven months seems a little old to me. I know people who gave their teething pups washcloths (or dishtowels) soaked in chicken broth, twisted then frozen - it's yummier than furniture, and the cold soothes their gums. Of course, that was confined to the kitchen linoleum floor! Does he just chew when left alone, or at specific times?

[k9-luvr]

Join the club,
I have a two and a half years labrador that still chews every possible thing in the house, so the bad news is that if he chews at 11 month he will probably go on for a long time.
But the good news is that you can prevent him from chewing your stuff by simply buying him special bones from a pet store. There are 2 kinds the phony ones and original bones from cattle (cow or perhaps pig or what ever). Buy him one of the original ones (if your pet store doesn't have them go to a butcher shop and ask to buy cow bones ,they will gladly sell it), the faked bones are also good but they fit smaller dogs mostly, because they dont last as long as the original ones. Anyway try them both, and I promiss you your problems will be over. It works like magic, your dog will chew only the bones.
The disadvantages are that 1 bone last for only a week to 2 weeks (atleast with my dog)
so you'll have to keep a stock of them, the other problem is that whenever I let my Lab take the bone to the yard, he simply dig a hole and hide it somewhere and then forget about it and go back to chewing our shoes.

Try this method (it really works!!!), in the worst case you loose a few bucks. Good luck :

[Angels3]

There's a useful article on destructive chewing at www.canine.org/chewing.html (http://www.canine.org/chewing.html)
It gives many ideas for managing chewing & includes a suggestion to put a certain bitter, but harmless product on furniture. There's also a list of useful items to give the dog & even a recipe for stuffing a hollow bone...called Puppy Cannolis. Another suggestion is to provide the dog with OK to-be-chewed items such as old sneakers.