Dutch Shepherd Forum

So, as I sit here and go through my pup's beginning stages of teething, I'm wondering if anyone has found any inventive ways of helping the poor pups deal with it?

My dude won't touch a cold rag with his paw let alone chew it. I call it prissy but he apparently has a grudge against "wet" water. But frozen water... he LOVES ice cubes and frozen fruit. Now, I'm all for whatever will help with his pain, but I got bored pretty quickly of fetching ice cubs, trying to figure out if the puddles in the kitchen were pee or a poor forgotten ice cube, and ignoring the "please sir can I have some more frozen fruit" begs after way more than he should eat. So I got to experimenting.

1) Balls of ice are wonderful. Literally. They make these ice molds that produce almost 3 inch diameter balls of ice. Throw in a little chicken broth or freeze something in them, and suddenly my guy is chasing his new edible ball around and having a blast, while trying to eat it at the same time. Apparently this company makes all kinds of molds.

2) wetting freeze dried treats and freezing them silicon muffin molds. It creates a sort of submerged treat they really want to get to, the and shape is great for working the back inflamed gums.

Those seem to be my two most popular ideas at the moment. My test kitchen (AKA the pup) has rejected about 30 others. I mean, I thought the frozen apple popsicle thing was awesome but he just stared at it until it melted. Any other ideas, or at least teething adventure stories?

Now I'm not sure how well it would work with a DS puppy, but I imagine that most puppies are the same across the breed spectrum when teething. I went to petsmart and bought a couple of rope toys, and used to soak them in water with chicken broth and then freeze them. I also tried the wet rag/towel trick and he didn't want any part of it. He went absolutely nuts over the frozen rope toys though. And once he chewed the rope toys up, we'd just go out and get some more. If anything it might be worth a shot with your puppy.

Forgot to mention this, we cut off the stringy ends of the rope toy so he wouldn't chew them off and swallow the strings.

For my last puppy we used carrots and frozen bananas a lot. Feeding raw also has the benefit of being able to feed large frozen potions for the main meal. A good frozen chicken quarter will last a while and smaller pieces can be lumped together with a little water and frozen inside a gallon ziplock.

Fleece tugs soaked in water and frozen also work well, especially for a tugging DS. You can leave one end without water for yourself if you want. Something similar to Chelsea's toys with the loop works extremely well. I braid them myself out of fleece scraps, but there are a ton of etsy.com if you just type in fleece tug or fleece dog toy. Nylabone also makes a few teething toys.

These are both brilliant ideas! I think he'll love the idea of frozen ice tugs and frozen rope tugs! Frozen bananas have been declared delicious and frozen carrots seem to given a stink eye (this dude is developing one hell of a sweet tooth apparently). You guys are genius!

carrots not frozen - try that. good for them and for the teeth. nutritionally, the carrots are better cooked. my pups go crazy for both. as bedtime snack last night, they got fresh-cooked purple carrots and were bug-eyed at the deliciousness. they get bananas every day, but i had not thought to freeze them. i love them frozen but am too lazy to do it for myself, but now i might as well do it for the dogs and have a ready supply for myself.