Our puppy is 5 months old and at the peak of teething. I am happy to report that she isn’t a chewer of furniture, although like most terriers she loves to steal socks and tries to haul off shoes that get left out.

We get her collagen chewing sticks of various lengths. She loves to gnaw on those. Rawhide is now deemed very unhealthy for dogs. She also loves to chew on her brother when they wrestle and chase. He reciprocates by stealing her favorite collagen chew whenever he can. Here she is with her longest chew. There are chews of various lengths all over the house.

Mitzi may not chew on furniture, but she has set herself a bigger goal of devouring our deck floor. We have a very large deck. It is perfect for the dogs to run and chase and tumble and wrestle

It even extends beyond the vertical boards you see, which is where the previous homeowners had their hot tub.

We knew the deck floor wasn’t in the best shape when we bought the house, and we plan to replace it one of these years with some indestructible modern composite like Trex. Mitzi decided about a month or so ago to speed up the replacement process by finding vulnerable sections in the flooring and chewing them up.

We didn’t catch on to what she was doing right away. After we realized what was happening we bought some inexpensive welcome mats to put on the vulnerable floor sections and we watch her very carefully when she is outside. The Vet and her breeder assure us that she will be over the Big Chews in a couple of weeks.

Any stories of destruction by your pets? When have you bitten off more than you could chew?