Rubber Teething Ring

Puppies teethe between roughly four and seven months and it genuinely hurts. A puppy chewing a table leg is not being difficult; it is looking for counter-pressure on an inflamed gum. Give it something better shaped for the job and most of the furniture problem goes away on its own.

The rubber here is deliberately soft, around 40 Shore A, closer to a car tyre wall than to the hard black chews sold for adult power chewers. A hard toy on a puppy's soft new teeth is how you get a fracture that shows up at the first adult dental check.

The hollow centre takes wet food, plain yoghurt or soaked kibble. Fill it, freeze it for four hours and hand it over: the cold does more for a sore gum than the chewing does, and a frozen ring will occupy a fifteen-week-old puppy for twenty minutes, which is a long time in that house.

Check it weekly and bin it when the surface starts to tear. Every chew toy is a consumable and no toy of any kind is safe unsupervised. It washes on the top rack of a dishwasher, which is easier than trying to get set yoghurt out of the middle by hand.