Dogs love to chew stuff no surprise there for anyone who’s had dogs. What they will try to chew pretty much has no boundaries as any one who’s had a puppy will know! If you want your dog to be able to enjoy chewing then healthy teeth and gums are a must.
Dogs just like us have 2 sets of teeth in their lives. Their first set of 28 teeth have come through when they are about 8 weeks old. By time they are about 7 months old these teeth will have been replaced by their 42 adult teeth.
For puppies just like babies, there mouth is a way of exploring the world so chewing on things is they’re way of helping them makes sense of their surroundings. Chewing will also just as in babies, help with the pain of teething.
For adult dogs chewing something is fun particularly if we’ve made a game of it by throwing sticks or balls. It may also be something that’s hardwired from their ancestry when they were hunter / foragers.
You’ll find plenty articles and information online about what you should and shouldn’t let your dog chew and how to prevent or break undesirable habits like chewing your furniture or shoes! Here are a couple that you might find useful – Blue Cross How To Control Dogs Chewing, PDSA Training Dogs Not To Chew
Healthy Teeth & Gums
Keeping your dogs teeth healthy is an important task and giving them suitable things to chew plays a part in that.
Our Golden Retrievers being large dogs are very competent chewers! Soft toys can be demolished in seconds, tennis balls or semi-soft foam balls are shredded in a matter of minutes!
Ember one of our current dogs is a master at finding the balls that owners have thrown for their dogs and not been retrieved. Unfortunately her penchant is for shredding the found ball and ingesting bits of it! It’s a constant challenge getting to her before she has a chance to get to work on one of her finds. It’s amazing we haven’t ended up at the vets with her getting a blocked gut sorted out!
So how do we keep our dogs teeth and gums healthy?
Check their teeth regularly to make sure there’s no plaque or tarter build up – if there is get brushing! You’ll get plenty of advice at your local pet shop just remember don’t use human toothpaste!
Everyday our dogs get a dental chew stick – we’ve found the Pedigree Dentastix work best for us. This appears to be effective at keeping plaque and tarter from building up so we rarely need to brush.
Every now and then they get a large shin bone to gnaw on and they also have an indestructible hard rubber ball to gnaw on if they want.
We do also let our dogs chew sticks but try to limit this to hard tough ones and also how often they get to do it. Chewing sticks probably does not make much contribution to keeping their teeth clean but they do enjoy it however, there are risk associated with letting your dog chews stick – splinters in the mouth, cut gums and the likes. There is an interesting BBC article on the subject that’s worth a read – Who, What, Why: Is it dangerous for dogs to fetch sticks?
