Chewing

You may want to add, we strongly encourage, some chew sticks to your puppy supplies. I call them finger savers. Puppies are chewers! With all of our  beagles I kept chew sticks on tables in various rooms and if the puppy started chewing on me or something it shouldn't, I would trade the puppy a chew stick for the finger or object. This helps to teach your puppy what is theirs and what isn’t. Hunter Blue learned this quickly and destroyed very few things that were not his. Hunter got one sock, Piper managed to do a little damage, but not too bad, Mocha had a major thing for Marc's reading glasses and tv remotes! For Shelby it was the remote for thr air filter. Teaching them what is theirs early on will just make things easier. For those of you with small kids, this is good for them to do as well since those puppy teeth can really hurt, and a reminder, anything on the floor belongs to the puppy! Start getting in the habit of not leaving things on the floor before you bring your new puppy home.

Puppy chewing hint - if your puppy nips you too hard, make a high pitched yip noise and remove whatever they nipped and ignore them for a moment. You want to teach them that biting you is not how to get your attention.  

Lots of play time and exercise is also a good thing, a bored puppy will look for things to chew on, a tired puppy will too, but not as much.

When teething starts you will definitely want to have lots of chewable things for your puppy. Your puppy will still need to chew even after all their puppy teeth have come out so that their new adult teeth can set correctly. We have had good luck buying flossies and bully sticks in bulk from sites like eBay and also watch for sales at local stores. Your puppy won’t care what it chews on when it is teething, it just really needs to chew.  Frozen baby carrots, frozen wet rags, in general cold things can be soothing for those little gums. Check with your vet to see if they have any recommendations. Expect anything that they are chewing on during this time to be destroyed. The worst of the chewing lasts about 3-4 weeks and then it will start to taper off in intensity.

Another source of razor blades cuts are the toenails. We will be trimming toe nails before your puppy/puppies go home with you, but you will need to consider this every month or so as well. If you can walk your puppy enough, the problem takes care of itself (I walk Hunter and Piper 2-3 miles a day and never have to cut their toenails). Some people prefer to have a vet or a groomer deal with the nails for them, others use my method of lots of walking and others use one of the many tools available, standard guillotine style nail trimmer, scissor style nail clippers, pet dremmel style grinding tools and even more. If you use a cutting method, make sure your device is sharp. Luckily our puppies have all had lighter nails which makes the nail trimming easier than dogs that have really dark colored nails, it's easier to see if you are cutting the nails too short. If you opt to trim the nails yourself and are using one of the cutting style tools as opposed to the grinding style, you may want some styptic powder or sticks on hand for those times when you do accidentally cut a nail a little too short. Don't worry, your puppy will forgive you when this does eventually happen.  If you use the grinding style tool, you may get the grinding wheel a little too close to the paw pad every now and then, use the lowest setting you can that still grinds the nails down, this feels like a little bit of sandpaper rubbing against your skin if it hits the pad. Once again, don't worry, your puppy will forgive you when this does eventually happen.