Problem with young dog constantly 'chewing on' the older dog

[BLACKJACK]

My female pup is now 18 weeks old, getting to that adventurous 'everything is a chew toy' stage, including my seven year old female. The older dog is miserable, I just wish she'd put the teeth to the young one, but she won't. If I have the back of the truck open, she'll hop in to get away from the pup. When we go on walks, they're fine, its just when we have free time around the shed and house that the pup wants to 'play' and harass and chew.

Any ideas on a gentle method of convincing the pup to leave the old dog alone?

[Dano2]

heh, heh, I have the EXACT same problem.
but my older one is about 3 and the younger one is about 8 months.
ALWAYS on the older ones case.
I do the same, wishing the older one would just put her in her place, but she doesn't.
I'm not sure if this is a sign that the younger one will be the dominent one or not, but so far I think she will be.

[BLACKJACK]

Bump. I know some of you guys have had this problem, how did you handle it?

[irvingdog]

I'm convinced that if my older dogs really have a problem with the younger ones, they handle it themselves. It seems like it bothers you more than it bothers them. (I hope that didn't sound wrong).
If you do decide to try to break this behavior, alway remember that if you tell the dog not to chew or play with one thing, that you give it an alternative.

[Bryce]

Sorry so long to reply Blackjack, been busy working on the shack for one last LOW run. Got a land owner in Nebraska who just loves eating walleye for breakfast while we pillage his roosters. Now if I could just find a fishing guide I could pay with pheasant.
My situation may have been a little different with a mother/daughter combo but saw the same behavior. The mother always let the youngster know when enough was enough. A quick nip or most times just a deep growl was enough to calm down the puppy. After awhile, the puppy outgrew this stage. The next stage began when they started taking turns chewing on each other. It was a play thing for them and they chewed on each other pretty good. If you didn't know the dogs, you would be tempted to step in and break up the fight. This went on until the old girl died although less and less as the older one aged and couldn't get around as well. I always expected this to break into an all out fight in an exchange of dominance role but it never came. Both were submissive enough to accept their roles and take turns being dominant. I think you're seeing the early stages of this by the way your old girl jumps on the tailgate for a timeout. Like I say, dogs at play can look very violent with the chewing and teeth flying but I wouldn't be worried unless one of the dogs is being very agressive.

[BLACKJACK]

Hi Bryce! Hope you have luck on LOW, I was up a couple of weeks ago out of one of the resorts and all we caught were little dinks. Ever since I looked at your old fishhouse, I've been thinking that I need to upgrade, would be a way to get the wife out more. Hey dear, you can just crawl into bed when you're tired of fishing, I'll be in shortly!! Throw in the TV and stove, all the comforts of home! Are you going to store your new one at Norway lake, I'd like to look at it.

Back to this puppy chewing problem. My previous two dogs were a mother/daughter combo and the mother just didn't tolerate the chewing, she put the teeth to the young dog and that was that. Now my older dog won't do that. She will occaisionally play with the young dog but then gets tired of it, in fact she looks miserable, but the pup just keeps after her. I've caught the old walking behind me because when she gets up ahead where she should be, then the young dog 'attacks'. Once we get farther afield, then its ok, they trot along together, finding all the nasty dead and smelly stuff. But the old dog will growl and let the pup know in no uncertain terms to stay away when I give them each a rawhide chewy, so she could keep the pup away if she really wanted. Oh well, I'll just keep telling the old dog that the pup will eventually grow up!

[metrojoe]

I have the same problem with my dogs. We have a Black Lab./Springer mix that will be 4 this year and the other is a gold lab/malamute mix shes 1 year old now. Cute dog but not my choice, I was out numbered three to one on that vote. Anyways, I've found that toys and rawhides are like fuel to the flame. It got bad enough one time that the younger one bit/ripped a good sized piece of the older ones ear off. I can't have both dogs together when I'm tossing the dummy because the younger one pays no attention to the dummy she just goes after the other dog. Needless to say we put an end to all toys in the house and we seperate them when we give them rawhides. The Black Lab had stitches for two weeks so any flare ups were delt with quickly and firmly. It has gotten alot better.

Good luck and it will definitely get better with age but those puppies really don't know how much is too much.

[simcox282]

I had the same problem with c/lab. She did grow out of it. mre importantly one thing that I learned is that the old dog and the new dog should not be kenneled together or share a lot of time together, esp during training. The problem is that the younger dog looks ot the older dog for affiramtion/that a boys vs. looking towards you. THey will grom out of it or the older dog will put a stop to it when they want to.