My Loki is now 15 months... is it still common at this age for a lab to be so destructive still? I can’t buy him any new toys now as he can destroy everything, latest two today, super strong rope toy, shredded, tough plastic dog football with grips, holes in. Both in the bin. I like him to play with his toys but have to chuck them when he destroys them, and now he’s so big at 35kg with a very strong jaw there’s not a lot he can’t get through. Bedding etc, rips it all up. He still steals thing, will swap for a treat if he hasn’t been able to swallow it first... still jumps up on the side, table etc. He’s like a crocodile that comes out of the water suddenly. He really is a pro at it!
Stanleys 18 months and destroys all new toys he gets pretty much straight away. I can't imagine him ever stopping so to be honest I just stopped buying them. He has his kongs, and a kong wobbler, some tennis balls and a rope toy but that's about it. Usually he only gets them if we're playing with them together(apart from his Kongs). He's also still a little thief. That's mine & OH's fault as we handled it wrong when he was little and now he does it to wind us up. We're working on encouraging him to bring us things but we're not sure if that damage is already done. That would be one thing I would definitely redo if I could go back. I get what you mean about he crocodile though.. they're so fast!
Coco is nearly 3 and a half and is never left alone with his toys - he'll just try and destroy them. We play together with them. He's not made a mark on the home made rope toys (made from climbing rope) though.
Yes, Molly’s the same with toys -and as she’s four there’s no hope of change. So she only has toys when playing with me -but I do play every day. However she’s grown out of chewing up things that don’t belong to her and I can leave washing hanging on a clothes horse and food on a low table, so things do get easier.
My two three-year-olds were horrors for destroying toys. The only ones that lasted any length of time were Tupper the Lamb and the Kong Cruncheez sheep. I gave up on toys with them in the end and they all went in a box until Squidge arrived. She is gentle with toys (the only thing she is gentle with, ha!) and hasn't destroyed a single one. Interestingly, after the period without toys, Willow and Shadow seem to have stopped shredding them for the most part. Although, I did find Willow destuffing "Moppy the reindeer"'s foot yesterday. As for counter-surfing, he won't do it if there's nothing there to steal. You can train dogs to not take things from the counter, but this has to be combined with management of your environment so they don't self reward. When they learn the lesson that there's often something good up there, they'll continue doing it.
Yes I think normally i manage to keep things out of reach on the worktop, it’s just been the odd mistake, but he is also naughty jumping up to the table he stole a fairy cake off a plate while we were sitting there. I don’t know how he does it! He might just have to go in his crate when we are eating
Keir is shaping up to be a toy destroyer and an ‘anything eater’ arrrrghhhh! Today he ate half of a Kong wubba and swallowed it. No soft toys are safe from being ripped up. Ho-hum! He’s a Guide Dog puppy so I rang the welfare officer and asked what I should do. He recommended monitoring and seeing if it comes up or out. Straight to the vet if there’s any lethargy, diarrhoea, vomiting or change in behaviour. Which is what I would have done with my own dog, but it’s nice to have advice on the end of the phone. Dogs which chew and eat everything .
Mine all go to their beds with Kongs at meal times but other ‘coffee table’ times just involve active, aware training - annoying because those are our times to relax!
Cooper (and Tilly when she was younger) are toy destroyers. There are a few like the Tuffy brand that seem to hold up, but their mission in life is to remove the squeaker and stuffing from most toys and we just accept that. One of our friends bought our dogs a present called a Bark Box. It is a cardboard box with a couple of toys and several packages of dog treats that is delivered each month (think Wine of the Month Club for dogs) The stuffed toys usually last 2 to 4 days, but Coop and Till don't usually eat them they just destroy them and play tug with the remains.
Hahaha! Now why does this sound familiar? Not to laugh at you but I swear our dogs are twins. Teller gives destructive a new meaning. Thankfully he doesn't wreck our possessions but he is an unabashed thief. To be fair I've not exactly discouraged this behavior as I used it to teach him to deliver to hand, but I digress. He usually doesn't try to eat what he steals with the exception of paper products and food. Rarely does he counter or table surf but when he does its like a sniper hit. There are two separate instances that come to mind; he was around Loki's age during both. During one he swiped a raw sweet potato off the counter and carried it off without anybody noticing until he set it down on the living room rug and my mother went to investigate 'that brown lump Teller has in his mouth', not going to lie my heart may have stopped to hear that phrase because potato was the last sort of brown lump I was thinking. And during the other we were having hamburgers or something similar and my mother placed a pickle on my brother's plate. Well, the pickle mysteriously vanished and mom wasn't any the wiser because my brother would frequently take food off his plate before a meal. He came upstairs when it came time to eat and asked where the pickle he had requested was. Turns out he didn't eat it nor did anyone else and it wasn't until T came up to me and breathed some juicy pickle-breath in my face that we figured it out. I mean the plates weren't even disturbed in the slightest and it was just gone. Truly a master of mischief, that one. He'll steal cat toys too and hide them in his mouth when you look at him, start chewing when you glance away; sometimes there's a tail or string sticking out of his jaws that he doesn't account for lol. About toys, Teller is the same way. This dog needs a job as a toy tester, if it can survive an hour with him it can earn the right to be branded for 'heavy chewers'. We quickly learned that he could not have anything but sturdy rubber toys - no rope pulls, soft toys, or fun balls (not even tennis or baseballs). Then it became apparently that he could only have the black (most durable) Kong toys and sort of went downhill from there, eventually he was able to destroy even those in a matter of days. We tried the West Paw Designs stuff; we tried a variety of Kong products; we tried NylaBone; we tried other rubber toys labelled 'indestructible' or 'tough' but he demolished them all, some within as little as 15 minutes. This applied to antlers as well; I made the mistake of buying him a split antler w/ cheese stuffing from Himalayan Dog Co. and he ate - literally consumed - it in 10 min right under our noses. Luckily he didn't suffer any ill effects outside of vomiting up some of the fragments in a lovely cheesy bile (that was fun to get out of the rug) and the company was very good about it, advising me that the split antlers are really meant for medium chewers and sending me a new, whole one free of charge. I'll give you tried and tested recommendations based on my experience with Jaws. Kong Traxx - this tire-shaped toy has lasted us 2 years and can serve as a tug toy if you want (Teller isn't allowed because we don't want to play tug over a game bird) Anything by Goughnut (the black toys are the toughest like Kong) - these are super sturdy, bouncy, float, come in a variety of shapes/sizes and will be replaced if the dog manages to bite through them and expose the red center. Planet Dog Orbee-Tuff balls (snowball, sol, luna, coal, or any similar one) - while Kong and Goughnut make balls, Teller looooves the Orbee ones. At first I was skeptical because they are so much lighter/thinner than you'd expect but are compressible and slick enough to prevent the dog from getting a solid enough grip to rip chunks off; they also float, bounce, and smell minty. I would go with only those ones that are smooth or pitted (like the coal/snowball) or large like the sol. Antlers - (whole antlers, not split) *Bones - I know not everybody is agreed on giving dogs bones (even large weight-bearing ones like cow femurs) but these also work for us. His Orbee 'Sol'. A thief to the last...
Thank you Teller’s Mom. I will look into your suggestions. And what a gorgeous dog you have, looks like butter wouldn’t melt ha ha
Thank you! Loki looks adorable, the yellow ones are my personal favorite haha. And, he sure is a ham. He knows he's a handsome boy and will exploit it. Once he even walked up to complete strangers waiting to cross the street at an outdoor festival and sat down at their feet whilst eyeing their leftovers. Thankfully they were dog people and laughed it off lol.
Plum was the same with destroying toys but at the moment seems to have stopped. She used to spend an hour most evenings going through her toy box choosing toys then tearing them to bits! In the end I used to buy her stuffed toys from charity shops (without eyes) because at least it was cheap! She hasn't done this though since she finished her season. Possibly a coincidence and she may start again sometime. I was recommended a rope ball (black, yellow and blue) from Pets at Home. It cost a fiver and she's never managed to destroy it. Although she tends to just bring it to me to play with her.
