there are lots of uses for chew toys in your training as well as in your adult
dog's life whether you're redirecting that puppy away from something that you
don't want them to chew and replacing it with a chew toy that you do want them to
chew or you're giving your dog a safe toy that they can have when you aren't
able to supervise them today we're going to talk about chew toy training for
those dogs who don't naturally love to chew I'm Ken Steepe and welcome back to
McCann dogs teaching your dog to enjoy chewing a can have all kinds of benefits
for some of the reasons that we mentioned earlier but if you have a dog
who doesn't enjoy chewing the first thing I want you to do is make sure that
you've got an appropriately sized chew toy now I went and picked up one of
these Nylabone essentials chew toys at our local pet store and this would be
for one of our bigger dogs you know Deegan our black lab or you know some of
our border collie would probably enjoy chewing on this it's also going to be a
little bit safer for them the worst thing you can do is buy a chew toy
that's too small for your dog dogs have such great bite pressure that they can
really damage their teeth if you get them too small of a chew toy but this
might be a little bit big for like hippy shake if you shake doesn't naturally
like to chew very much and it's something that we've worked with her on
and this toy wouldn't be if I were introducing this to a small dog this
wouldn't be the size of toy that I would choose now as I mentioned there are
different flavors that you can get this one's actually chicken flavored and I
know I've seen all kinds of different flavors out there in fact there's
actually a pizza nylon Bone chew toy that I saw for dogs that look pretty
cool and if I were a dog I think that's the one I would choose now something
else you can try if you have a dog who doesn't really like to enjoy chewing is
to get a different density of to bone now this one's a little bit softer it's
a wag where you know I'll post a link in the description below if you guys want
to check this one out specifically but you can see it's just a little bit it's
not quite as hard and this will allow that dog who doesn't really isn't
gratified by the chewing chewing our harder bone to start to get the Flex off
of something like this and it may entice them to chew a little bit more now we
all know somebody who has a dog who chewed up their shoes or who ate a
soccer who got into the dirty laundry hamper and there's a good reason for
that we all know the dogs have a very heightened sense of smell and when
they're investigating these things those items that smell like you are of
particular importance to them so you can actually take advantage of that and you
can make that chew toy smell like you and there's a couple of options I
mean not like this but all joking aside if you were to you know put that chew
toy under your armpit after you went to the yoga studio or you or just came back
from the gym or maybe if you're Canadian you can toss it in your hockey bag I
couldn't find my hockey helmet now I'm gonna escape though having these new and
interesting smells on the chew toy may be the thing that entices your dog to
engage with it now when you first bring these toys home they're actually really
smooth and your dog's goal is going to be to take tiny little flecks off of the
two toys so what you can do to you know help make it a little bit easier for
your dog if they don't necessarily like to chew is roughen the surface any rough
surface will do but that's going to make it a little bit easier for your dog to
be gratified by the chewing on the bone if you've jump-started the process just
a little bit for those of you in a multi dog household giving that chew toy
initially to one of the other dogs is often a good way to create some interest
you know the dog your dog really understands at that point that it's a
resource that they probably want so take advantage of that and give the toy to
one of your other dogs who likes to chew before giving it to your dog who isn't
necessarily interested in it treat that chew toy like something of value if this
is left out on the ground all the time so that my dog always has access to it
it becomes much less interesting but if I only bring it out when we're hanging
out on the couch watching a movie or when you know he he or she wants to
engage with it then it becomes a little bit more interesting and it could really
help you to entice your dog to engage with something like this if they think
they've got limited time access to it from puppies all the way up to senior
dogs chewing is a really natural behavior and whether you're using it as
a pastime to alleviate boredom or you're using it for training maybe you're
redirecting them away from something that you don't want your dog to chew and
you're replacing it with something that you do want to chew or you're just
trying to maintain good dental health for your dog these two toys can be a
really really useful tool so make sure you take advantage of what you learn
today in in the training now if this is your first time on the channel make sure
you hit that subscribe button we publish new videos every single week to help you
to have a well-behaved four-legged family member that video beside me is
actually a video about teaching your dog to love playing with toys and you talk
turn on the channel about how that's a really nice way to engage with them on
that note I'm Ken thanks for watching happy training