How to Stop a Dog From Chewing Everything

Destructive chewing comes from one of three causes, and the fix is completely different for each, so diagnose first. The three are teething in dogs under seven months, understimulation in dogs of any age, and anxiety, usually separation related. Guessing wrong wastes months.

Here is how to tell them apart and what to do about each.

Diagnose it in 60 seconds

Teething. Dog is 3 to 7 months old. Chews everything indiscriminately, especially anything with give. Chewing happens whether or not you are home, and often while you are sitting right there.

Understimulation. Dog is over 7 months. Chewing happens during the day or evening, often when you are home but busy. The dog seems fine emotionally, just busy destroying a shoe. Frequently paired with pacing, pestering, and zoomies.

Anxiety. Chewing is concentrated at exit points. Door frames, window sills, crate bars, the carpet in front of the door. It happens only when you are gone, usually in the first 30 minutes. Often accompanied by drooling, panting, house soiling in an otherwise trained dog, or vocalizing.

That location detail is the most reliable single tell. A dog chewing a table leg in the middle of the room is bored. A dog chewing the door frame is panicking.

If it is teething

This is developmental and it ends. Puppies get adult teeth in around 16 to 28 weeks and the discomfort drives chewing. You manage it rather than train it away.

Give six to eight appropriate chew options and rotate them. Rotation matters. A toy that has been away for a week is new again.

Frozen items work best. A wet, frozen washcloth. A frozen stuffed rubber toy. Cold numbs sore gums and puppies seek it out.

Puppy proof aggressively. Cords out of reach, shoes behind doors, remotes on shelves. You are not going to out-supervise a puppy for four months.

Use a leash tether or an X pen when you cannot watch. A puppy loose in a house is a puppy making decisions.

Trade, do not chase. When he has something forbidden, offer a swap for something better. Chasing him teaches him that stolen items produce a fantastic game.

Expect it to substantially settle by seven months.

If it is understimulation

This is the most common cause in adult dogs, and the fix is not more walking. Walking a high energy dog often makes a fitter dog with the same problem.

Feed meals through work. Stop using a bowl. Put breakfast in a snuffle mat, a puzzle feeder, or scatter it in the grass. Twenty minutes of sniffing and problem solving does more for mental fatigue than a 45 minute walk. This one change fixes a surprising number of chewing cases on its own.

Add 10 minutes of training a day. Training is mentally expensive. A dog who has just done 10 minutes of focused work usually sleeps afterward.

Give a daily long chew session. A bully stick, a frozen stuffed toy, a raw bone if that fits your setup. Twenty to forty minutes of hard chewing is genuinely calming for dogs. It lowers arousal in a way that running does not.

Add sniffing to walks. A 20 minute walk where the dog chooses the route and sniffs freely produces more tiredness than a 40 minute march at heel.

Build a settle. A dog who does not know how to be off duty in the house will find work for himself. Duration on a place command is the answer, built up in increments to 30 minutes.

Two weeks of that routine resolves most boredom chewing.

If it is anxiety

Do not treat this with more exercise or a stuffed toy. A dog in genuine distress will not touch a food toy while alone, which is itself a diagnostic test. Leave a stuffed frozen toy when you go out. If it is untouched when you return, that is anxiety, not boredom.

The work is graduated absence, and it is slow.

• Practice your departure cues without leaving. Pick up keys, sit back down. Put on shoes, watch TV. Thirty reps until the cues mean nothing.
• Leave for 10 seconds. Return calmly. Repeat 10 times.
• Build to 30 seconds, then two minutes, then five, then fifteen.
• Do not progress until the dog is relaxed at the current duration on camera. Use a camera. You are guessing without one.

This takes four to twelve months for serious cases and it is worth involving your veterinarian, because medication combined with behavior work often outperforms behavior work alone for dogs in real distress. I would rather tell you that than have you spend a year on it alone.

What does not work

Punishing after the fact. Your dog cannot connect a correction to something he did 40 minutes ago. The guilty look is a response to your body language in the moment, not an admission.

Bitter apple spray alone. Some dogs are deterred, many are not, and it does nothing about the underlying cause.

Taking away all toys so he learns. Chewing is a normal, necessary dog behavior. The goal is redirection to legal objects, not elimination.

What it looks like when it is working

Your dog seeks out his own chew items rather than yours. He settles within 10 to 15 minutes of you sitting down instead of pacing. When you leave a room he does not immediately look for something to do.

The management piece

While you train, remove access. Baby gates, crate when appropriate, and clear floors. Every rep of chewing a table leg makes the table leg more attractive. Chewing is self reinforcing, so unsupervised access is not neutral, it is practice.

My free First 7 Days blueprint covers the structure, confinement, and enrichment routine that prevents most of this in the first place, and it works just as well for resetting an adult dog who has drifted. Download the First 7 Days blueprint.

Ready to train your dog?

Every drill in this article comes from the WorldWide K9 Academy course library. If you want the full step by step system, start with the $5 intro course.