Puppy mess!

My puppy gets into everything! She chews up everything! She's into 'bite" right now, so can anyone help me? She chews up all her chew toys in 2 days! HELP!

[purrley]

Welcome to Puppy Hood - I'm going through the same thing - so I'll be keeping an eye on the help you get with this one

[Pam]

Bella is just 13 months now and I can't really say that she is out of the puppy stage completely yet, so you probably have quite a long road ahead of you with puppy antics. As far as the chewing goes, that has pretty much stopped but she does shred her stuffies so I have stopped buying them. At least she realizes that her things are different from my things and my things shouldn't be chewed. Unfortunately you just have to be on top of your little one every minute, ready to scold or praise. It is just a matter of repetition, but fortunately over time it works. As for the biting, or puppy nibbles as we used to call them, we always said a loud "no bite" and then removed whatever human body part she was gnawing on from her grasp and stopped giving her any attention when she did that. Eventually she learned that we were more likely to play with her when she was well behaved. Again, it's just a matter of time, but she will catch on. Now if I could just stop her from occasionally stealing trash out of the small trash can in the bathroom!!

[mary_jsn]

I think you should do what everyone does when they get a new puppy. I mean puppy proof your home. If you have a garden you should keep her there and if she sleeps inside you could buy her a crate and let her sleep in.

[purrley]

Mary - in several of your posts you have refered to "A GARDEN" to let your dog go in. Here in the U.S. we try and keep our pooches out of the garden. A garden is where we grow all our flowers and/or vegetables. What is a garden in Chili???

[kobieeli]

We went through Eli's puppyhood just a little more than a year ago, and some things definitely help:

1) Having a crate for the pup, with soft bedding and a toy or two, is a good way to keep the pup in a safe place when you're not playing with her; it helps with housetraining too. Don't let a pup run around unsupervised!

2) If she's chewing up stuff that's not toys (furniture, books, etc.) spray a little "Bitter Apple" on them--you can find this at pet stores. It makes things taste bad.

3) How old is your pup? if she's 4-5 months old, she's probably teething! Get her some firm rubber toys to chew (not soft fluffy toys) or some kind of bones.

4) When she's biting you, yelp as if it hurts you, then give her an acceptable toy to chew. Always substitute your hand for a chew toy so she learns the difference!

Hope this helps a little, and enjoy your puppy! They grow up so fast...

[mary_jsn]

In here, we also plants flowers and keep then nice and have a beautiful grass and everything. We don't exactly use the garden for Leika but the backyard. Nobody sees it and the last owner of our house left it in terrible conditions. And anyways we don't mind 'cause Leika often 'smells' our flowers and i think she already knows that we don't like it when she eats them!. Here we often use other places to plant our vegetables like farms and everything. If you don't like your pooches in the garden you could use as well a backyard! 'cause no matter how small your dog is he/she needs exercise in some way.