How do I stop my dog chewing my shoes?

Welcome, you must have read the title of this article and thought yourself, ‘my dog does this too, let’s check out what Katie says’…you are in for a treat because guess what ?

My dog does too!!

But Katie, you’re a behaviourist! Surely your dogs are perfectly behaved?

Of course they are! When they are asleep…haha I jest with you lovely reader…my dogs are dogs not robots so no they won’t ever be perfectly behaved. And I kinda like that, I’m more than OK with it.

Me and teensy tiny landshark

Hattie Happypants has a bit of a nibble of things now and then, so I should know better than to leave things lying around that could be chewed a bit. Ren might shred a blanket when she is particularly frustrated.

I obviously don’t like that they chew my shoes. Or my glasses. Or my fit bit.

Yes that happened!

And it wasn’t their fault they chewed my stuff.

Easy to lay blame with the dogs. However, it’s natural for dogs and puppies to explore their environment with more than their noses and eyes and ears. They also explore with their mouths; no hands, right! Sometimes chewing can be a result of frustration, anxiety, teething or other mouth or digestion related issues, and many other factors. But at the end of the day no matter how old or well trained my dog is, sometimes, if I leave my fit bit on the bed and forget to remove it or put it back on, it might be investigated by my dogs’ teeth…

The Hattie’d fit bit

I can relate to this Katie! So how do I stop them chewing my stuff then?

Good question! Rather than thinking about how to stop them, think about how to prevent the chewing, and how you address the reasons for the chewing if this is a persistent problem or your dog suddenly starts to chew objects they didn’t before.

1st - Get your vet to rule out medical causes for the problem. For instance, when Ren was younger, she would lie under the bed and chew it’s legs. The legs were made of steel so this was alarming…

Even though Ren was an adolescent dog, she was thoroughly checked to ensure she was healthy including a mouth xray to rule mouth pain out. Turned out her mouth was fine but she problems with her joints.

2nd - Consider how to arrange their environment to ensure they can’t access things they could chew, or be prevented from doing so if unsupervised. Shutting a door might be all you need to do, a shoe box, or stair gates.

3rd - Provide appropriate outlets for them. This might be old shoes you don’t mind chewing out, nice shoes put away all the time. Or extra toys and and varying textures, and less ball flinging, more brain drain games like “find it” like this video.

For Ren this involved a plethora of her preferred chew substances and more flat soft toys she could get her back teeth onto, all placed near the bed legs (to allow her opportunity to make a good choice), more time spent working her thinking brain than physically exercising her which as it turns out was making her over stimulated, so chewing was one of her releases of the arousal she was feeling!

Us humans have a hard time changing our habits and routines to help our dogs and I hold my hand up high and admit I too, am human and I too F up occasionally and leave stuff out.

Chewing might be an outward expression of more than over stimulation though so do contact me if you have no shoes left!

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