Stop Your Dog's Destructive Chewing in 5 Simple Steps!

By Jess Rollins
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Dogs need to chew! In order to help prevent your dog from chewing furniture and shoes, one of the biggest helps is to make sure that your dog has plenty of appropriate toys to chew on. I will outline all the steps below to help stop your dog from chewing you out of house and home!

1. Prevent destructive chewing: Use crates, gates and tethers (only tether your dog while supervised), to keep your dog from sneaking off to chew on your tennis shoes. Make sure your dog has plenty of chew toys accessible at all times and gets plenty of exercise. Keeping your shoes and other items that your dog likes to chew out of reach is also important to break the habit.
2. Make chewing your stuff less pleasant: Coat furniture and other items that your dog is chewing with a taste deterrent such as Bitter Apple.
3. Give lots of great alternatives to your furniture and shoes: Make sure your dog has lots of chew toys and rotate them daily to keep them interesting.
4. Reward your dog for chewing on appropriate items: When you see your dog chewing on his toy or bone make sure to praise your dog and even better, toss a treat.
5. Drop it: If you catch your dog chewing on something he should not be, you can ask your dog to drop it and trade for a treat. Then make sure you do more of the steps above to prevent it from happening in the future.

The steps above should help stop your dog's chewing on furniture and shoes and get him hooked on his or her own toys. Let us know how you do and Happy Training!