[Kinete]

This is kind of a silly question but I'm fairly new to dogs. As a kid I grew up with cats, and still have 2 so I've taken care of cats for about 18 years of my life. I've socialized and rehomed many stray kittens, so I'm pretty good at house training cats. However Sadie is my first puppy... so I'm quite the newbie. ops:

Now dogs are nothing like cats but there is one technique that I think might work with my puppy, Sadie. She was a stray who I basically fell in love with at first sight. For a puppy she is extremely well behaved. However she is teething, so she chews and chews and chews.... This little girl can chew herself to the moon and back. Now I understand chewing is a crucial part of being a puppy so she has many chew toys, and we've been rotating them so she doesn't get too bored. But here's the thing... she LOVES fleece. If you let her she will chew on a fleece sweater, blanket.. anything. So far it's been a off limits thing but when I went to the pet store today I saw some fleece balls and thought to myself.. well she'd LOVE that.

It got me wondering it if would work though. One of the techniques I've used on cats is redirection. When kitty is doing something bad I simply get their attention (usually with a clap) and direct their attention to something positive like a wand toy or crinkle ball. I was thinking with Sadie when I catch her on the blanket to give her the firm "no" and give her the fleece ball instead. Basically to try to teach her to only chew on the fleece ball... would that work? If I did get fleece balls she would only be allowed to chew on them under supervision though because I know she will totally destroy them. Or would the fleece balls simply teach her to chew on fleece and defeat the purpose? Sadie is responding well to the firm no and will stop what she is doing. We have coupled it with a snap of the fingers so she is learning to stop to just a snap (because the cats respond to no as well.. so we wanted something just for her). I'm just wondering if giving her that will get her chewing on soft furniture... which currently she is not.

It's basically a training question and I've been reading a lot of course but I'm wondering has anyone had any luck with a redirection technique in dogs?

[cigwyllt]

It's not quite the same but we had two Jack Russells who just loved to dig. In an effort so save the grass in our garden we encouraged them to dig in a particular spot. So if we saw them digging we would call them over and point and tell them "dig dig". It became known as "the dig dig hole" and if at any time we saw them dig elsewhere we could just call out "dig dig hole" and they would go straight to the hole and carry on there. I can't see why it wouldn't work with toys as well.

[Todd]

yes that is exactly what u should do! redirection is great to let the dog know that you are not depriving them of chewing (a natural thing) but rather redirecting their desire to something where they can carry that out. you need to teach the dog that it can chew on certain items belonging to it but not your property. you're doing exactly what u should be doing. keep up the good work!