Taggart is chewing wood!

[Taz_Zoee]

Frozen Kong? Sort of Dog Chewing 101 and you may have already tried it, but it doesn't hurt to have a couple lying around in the yard. Plus, it's completely safe to leave them with unsupervised, provided you don't stick something like a cooked chicken bone in it

I was also thinking about just using chicken fencing to blockade the wood. If nothing else, you could lay it over the parts that he likes to chew. That would make it more difficult (but not impossible) for him to chew the wood itself. What I'm thinking is: if you give him the option of a frozen Kong vs. wood with chicken wire over it, I'd be willing to bet that he'd choose the Kong over the wood. But who knows! Puppies are a different kind!

A Kong!! Darn, why didn't I think of that?! I even bought a second one so they would each have one. In fact, the new one is still in the bag. Duh!!! Today I put the cuz and one of the knuckle bone things out there and he was playing with those. I noticed that they like to play together, so I am going to get this ring I saw today and they can play tug with it.
The idea about wire over the areas is a good idea too.

Wow, I bet Daddy isn't happy at all......Boomer and Cassie both like wood. Cassie used to chew the shrubs my husband tried to plant but as she got older, she left them alone...Their wood chewing is mostly pencils my kids leave out....I'm a city girl, and I don't know hardly anything about horses, but a friend of mine who has a small barn and a horse was horsesitting once, and the guest horse either chewed or rubbed or something on the wood of the stall. Her husband was not happy, either....Is there some sort of horse product out there that would prevent a horse from doing this? If there is, maybe it would work on a dog.....

Hmmm, that would be something to look into as well. I'll have to ask my sister or niece. They are the horse experts in my family. LOL Thank you!

Do you have access to a tree or trees that you could chop off big branches for the dog to chew? I know we did that with one of ours and it kept him happy forever.

There are plenty of trees and bushes for him to get. In fact, before Bruce mows the lawn he must remove all kinds of twigs and things so he doesn't run over them.
I sorta thought chewing on wood would not be a good thing for their health though. I don't know that I'd want to encourage it. But for now I only want to discourage him eating the deck. I honestly don't care about the twigs and branches he finds.

So my solution for now is plenty of toys. I'm going to go get the Kongs set up to freeze so Bruce can throw them out with them tomorrow (providing it doesn't rain).

Thank you everyone for all the suggestions!!