Top Chew Toys for Power Chewer Dogs (Trainer Picks)

Hello, dog peeps. Jack here. Just a quick one before we get into this episode. You may or may not be aware that when I'm not talking dog stuff with Max, I in fact interview people who are incarcerated in prisons across the United States on a show called One Minute Remaining: Stories from the Inmates. And that show has been nominated for an award in America. And I would love your support if you've got 60 seconds to click the link in the show notes of this episode and just vote for my show. That would be amazing if you could. Thank you very much indeed. Oh, and don't forget to verify your email address. Otherwise, the vote does not count. Thank you.

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It's the Dog People Podcast with your host, Jack Lawrence. Secretly, I decided to start this podcast for some free dog training advice. You know, Malinois seem to be like the dog at the moment. Like, I think people see them on Instagram doing these incredible things. Yeah. Go, oh my God, that's awesome. And then they get one like, oh my God, what the fuck have I done? And Max O'Neill.

You would not believe how many people I meet And I go, what made you want to get, say, an Aussie Shepherd? They go, I don't know. I go, had you met one before? They go, no. If you want to ask me how often I walk my own dog a week, it's only twice a week.

It's the Dog People Podcast, a podcast hopefully giving you a no-nonsense approach to dog training so you never have to shout, it's okay, it's friendly. My name is Jack Lawrence, not a dog trainer, but of course Max O'Neill, Down Under Dog Trainer. Max, we want to talk about Power chewers. I think a lot of people have got dogs that just love to destroy, rip, chew. I mean, Kira is one of them. If I leave any toy around whatsoever by accident, I'm guaranteed to come back and it has just been destroyed. So often, and I'm sure you get this question a hell of a lot, is what on earth can I buy for my dog that just wants to chew?

Yeah, something we get a lot is, um, you know, and it's often surprising breeds too, is you'll have breeds like Labradors or Goldies or cattle dogs, whatever, that just have these, these monster chewers. And no matter what you get them, they make their way through. So today we're going to talk about like my 6 favorite things, the things that I recommend, recommend to clients. It's going to be a few things that I've left off here and we'll talk about why. Um, and we'll talk about what each one of them is really good for. Probably the key thing to recognize here though, is other than, uh, the Kong, Everything I'm going to recommend today is replenishable, means it will go down over time. It won't last forever, but that's actually really important because if something's that hard, it lasts forever, it's probably too much for your dog's teeth. So we'll talk about that soon. But yeah, without further ado, here's our 6 favourite things. Uh, number 1, uh, in no particular order, is a coffee wood stick. So a lot of our dogs love timber. Um, you know, probably a few of you as well listening.

Kira always gets sticks and just destroys them.

Full timber fetish. Hey, and some then translate that over to like the legs of a chair, legs of a coffee table, skirting boards, etc. Like just for whatever reason, the texture of wood, some of our dogs just absolutely love. So you can definitely give them sticks at the park, but obviously that is chew, chew, chew, crunch, crunch, and it's done pretty quickly. And obviously there's, you know, safety concerns with sticks. You see a lot of dogs end up in the R3 carrying around a stick that then just snaps inwards and breaks in their mouth. So the way around that is looking— what if you Google a dog coffee wood stick? You'll see it's this nice little cylindrical thing, you know, maybe like close to 30 centimetres long for big dogs or shorter. It's all filed and sanded down. So there's no edges, nothing sharp, no splinters, nothing like that. And just like the weight and the texture and the hardness of it is absolutely perfect. Like it's not going to break your dog's jaw. It's not going to crumble in a second. Like it'll last months and months. Mm-hmm. And they're really cost-effective. They're from a brand called Wag. Again, none of this stuff is sponsored today. These are just stuff we like. So, if you type in Wag Wooden Stick for dogs, you'll see it pop up and they are absolutely awesome. We get them for Nelson, as you guys know. Nelson's like a big meat-headed Rottweiler, and even for him, they'll last absolutely ages, as long as you get the one that's the right size for your dog. And you don't want to get one too small. You don't want them, you know, with any of these chewing things, you don't want something that could disappear down your dog's throat. So, invest in the size appropriate or size up for what they need. And yeah, the Wag Wooden Sticks are awesome. Absolutely awesome.

All right, fantastic. What's number 2?

Number 2 is our Nylabones. So Nylabones are available from Pet Barn or other pet stores. They're those like plasticky looking things. They're generally like bacon or chicken flavoured. I really, really like those. Again, they're not just a dull plastic. Some of these, what am I trying to say, dog chews that are like a hard plastic, I'm not a huge fan of because one, they're unscented. So a lot of dogs just have zero appeal to chew it. 2, Because they're unscented. If your dog does start chewing that thing, because it just smells like plastic, your dog then starts to look around for other stuff. Oh, that Xbox remote, that TV remote, etc. Still, all the kids' toys smells of the same plastic. So I think this is a toy, so they can get confused. And 3, some of those just like normal plastic toys, like the real hard ones that are like, you know, come in these like bully boxes on a subscription, like they're so bloody hard. I've had some clients go, we've had this, it's lasted years, and you feel it like you could knock someone out with that as a blunt object.

It's like chewing a rock. Just chewing a rock.

And you can see Like that's when you see those dogs whose canine teeth just file down over time. So not a fan of those, but that's why the Nylabones are really good. They're made of like a rice flour compound or something like that. They're scented and flavoured, so it encourages them to use it more. And they can come in all sorts of different shapes. You got those like long ones, those ones that are in like a Y shape and all bumpy. They're all good.

I must admit, every time I've gone in, cause I mean, I don't, I'll be honest, I don't frequent the pet barns very much. To be honest, I think they're just full of shite. But, and I've seen those bones in there and part of me has gone, I wonder if they're any good. But yeah, there are.

I really like them. Same even with like working organizations I've been involved with. Like when those dogs get placed into homes, it's one of the things they get, a Kong, they get a Nylabone, and they're great. What I will say is like, I do have a lot of clients who get them like, my dog hasn't touched it. I'd recommend taking your dog to the store if they're able to and just like going home.

See which one they go to.

See which one they actually like. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Because actually I've done that as well. I've brought home, you know, things like that, spent a reasonable amount of money and you sort of go, here you go. And they just go, Yeah, they just leave it like, oh, I'm not

playing with

that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think I did that with, um, what was the bone I got? It was like an antler bone or something like that, some sort of antler thing. And yet no interest. Yeah, no interest.

Well, stick around to the end of the episode because we're going to chat around about that exact thing, guys. If your dog isn't going for it or loses interest, how we can combat that. But nylabones are good. They're just that right level of hardness where again, they'll last a long time. They're not gonna be like a pig's ear that's done in 5 minutes or whatever. They're going to last a significant amount of time, but they're kind of the right amount of hardness where it's not going to damage your dog's teeth. I know dogs that have had Nylabones every single day for their life and their teeth are fine and healthy.

Can I just derail us for just a second? Because you mentioned pig's ears. What's your opinion on pig's ears? Are they—

Yeah, good. But pork's like very salty and fatty. So like pig's ear every day, like can lead to—

The runs and—

Yeah. Like, you know, pancreas issues, kidney issues, stuff like that. But yeah.

But overall they're okay as an occasional sort of—

Oh, definitely. Yeah, no, 100%. Just don't expect to get very long out of them. Like I think,

Because that's an, I mean, it's an old school treat for a dog. Like, 'cause my grandparents had a pet food shop in London and they had, they had pig's ears and things like that in there. So, I mean, they've been around for donkey's years or dog's years. And, and I always, I've heard mixed opinions on them because I always got my dog, you know, pig's ears and people are like, oh, they're no good.

Nah, they're fine. I mean, like they're just dehydrated and whatnot. Yeah. Yeah. Like I said, just wouldn't do it every day. Like some people make it a part of their dog's diet. I wouldn't. Do that and have them as a treat and just don't expect to get very long. Some people go, I'm going out for 8 hours, so here's a pig's ear. I'm like, okay, that's giving your dog 5 minutes of entertainment maximum. Yeah. While you go out for the day. That's the only downside. But then they're fine.

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Fair enough. All right, next treat.

Next one is just your good old-fashioned Kong. So Kongs, as you know, those little like beehive-y, butt-pluggy looking things.

Great, but great for a reward. They bounce too.

Like, and I'm sort of—

what, actually, I watched a video the other day of a trainer talking the reason they use a Kong was because of the way it bounces so randomly. It sort of, it fires off the prey drive a lot more too.

Way more.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry to again derail.

No, no, 100%.

But yeah, I've got one of those and I use them obviously Yeah, I use it for putting stuff in it for her to go for. But I also use it for training and as a sort of reward.

Yeah, same. Nelson's got his like Kongs that we stuff with food, and then he's also got one of those orange ones on a rope.

Yeah, I got one of those.

The foam inside, the floaty ones. Yeah, they're awesome. They're so versatile. Like I said, you can play fetch with it, you can use it as enrichment, you can use it as a formal retrieve, and they're just so hard wearing. Like, they do come in a few different colors. You've got like your puppies, your normal, your seniors, your power chewers. Again, if you're listening to this and you do have a power chewer, just go the black ones. Like, that's what we use for Nelson now, like exclusively the more dense black rubber, um, and they're awesome. They're so, so good. Like, what we like to do, we've got like maybe, I don't know how many Kongs, I feel like we've got like 10 or 20 Kongs, and once a month we'll do this meal prep. We'll just like pack them full of all these raw meat and all these like supplements and stuff, fill the— fill a little basket in the freezer, and then once a day just pull one out, go, here you go, just like that. Yeah. And, um, same, and like that, but if a Kong normally lasts an hour, if you freeze it, it lasts 3, 4 times as long and it's harder, so there's a lot more chewing involved and, uh, Yeah, 100%. Yeah.

I mean, when— if I put stuff in a Kira— in a Kong, Kira is just like, she making love to it for a long time. She gets right into it.

Gets stuck in.

Yeah. Not cheap, but they're worth— they're absolutely worth every, every penny.

Little side note with Kongs, check on Marketplace. Like I said, we've got 20. That's not a flex. We got like 90% of them off Marketplace because people sell them for like $5, $10. So yeah, right.

I never thought about that. Yeah, I've always bought them brand new.

Yeah, for like $35.

Yeah. What a fool I am.

Yeah.

Okay, cool.

So that's number 3, Kongs. Number 4, now moving into our more like natural animal product-based ones. Number 4 is the goat horn. Now we're going the goat horn over the deer antler, so I want to leave that one out intentionally. I find the deer antlers can just be that little bit too hard.

That's what I had, a deer antler, no interest. And they are rock hard.

Rock, rock, rock hard. Even like with Nelson, like he would have that thing for months and go to town on it and barely make a millimeter off it. I'm like, nah, like that. They're just that little bit too hard. I do think they can file down dogs' teeth over time. And I've, in fact, I'm pretty sure I've had a vet tell me that unless I just dreamt it. So we go goat horns. Goat horns are made out of keratin, which is like our hair, nails, and skin. So that keratin is softer than our dog's enamel, but also super high wearing. So again, if you get a goat horn, it can last anywhere from weeks to months, depending on how often your dog interacts with it. And as you'll see when they kind of start chewing, it does get a bit kind of like fibrous and whatnot, which is just like a perfect toothbrush. Nelson's teeth are Ice, ice, ice white. And that is simply from his goat horns. They can be a little bit stinky sometimes. Sometimes they've got like this something in the middle, like a marrowy sort of thing. They're not like dripping wet with blood, like far from that. You can just give them a pet balm, but they're more of an outside thing. But goat horns are really, really, really good. Again, always recommend getting one of the bigger ones, simply because you don't want your dog to be able to swallow any of this sort of stuff. So same with the Kongs. Don't get the little tiny puppy Kongs. Get one that's nice and big. They can get their tongue inside. And not swallow. And same with the goat horns. You can get ones that are really tiny or you can get ones that look like a fucking Viking murder weapon. Get the one that's bigger. Get more out of it.

Bigger's better.

Bigger's better. Moving on. Number 5 is just bones in general. We might do a whole episode on this at some point, but bones can be safe for your dog if they're taught to eat correctly. We've mentioned this plenty of times. The couple of caveats again is get something your dog can't just swallow instantly. If you give them a chicken wing, I have seen dogs that swallow entire chicken wings.

Kiera's done that before. I'm like, where'd that go, mate? Honestly, you're supposed to chew that thing.

Yep. Just like that. Hey, the second one as well is try and get something that's not load-bearing. So like, if you look at like a cow, the load-bearing bones are in the legs and the shoulders, things like that. Get something that's not designed to support the weight of the animal. So spines, necks, ribs, scapulas, tails, skulls, all that sort of stuff is fine. But like femurs and all that sort of shit, and or pig trotters are not so great. Those bones are so fucking hard to carry the weight of the animal. But they're harder than our dog's teeth. So those weight-bearing ones can be a little bit iffy. So just be careful if you are someone that feeds bones to your dogs or wants to start trying. We just recommend not using a load-bearing bone, at least not too often anyway.

I've given a pig trotter once before. I won't do that again.

Yeah, pig trotters are a bit hard. Like I said, every now and then is fine, but— She's only had it once.

I mean, she was on it for a while.

Yeah. Yeah. Or like cow femurs. We used to get our Labradors growing up with like those big sawn-in-half cow femurs. We'd give them like one side each. They would last days and our dogs would chew them for 12 hours straight. And, um, over time their teeth just go, you know, just shrink right down. So bones. Uh, and then lucky last, number 6 is our bone marrow amber chews. Now a lot of you probably haven't seen or heard of these. They're one of our like new favorite things. And again, not an ad at all. I'm just going to put up a generic image or a generic link of where to get these. Just before the episode, actually just hit order and bought a few more for Nelson for Christmas. Basically what they are, they can anywhere be from like 10 centimetres long to like 30 centimetres long, and they almost look like a gold bar. If you think of the shape of a gold— what a gold bar might look like in a movie, kind of like trapezoid sort of trapezium sort of shape. But it's like they get this bone marrow, they boil it, they put in different herbs and stuff like that to make it really healthy, and then it like— they turn it into like a Amber. So it's like rock hard but translucent. And you look at this thing and it looks flimsy as anything, but again, it is hard, hard, hard. But again, that perfect balance where it's not hard enough to ruin your dog's teeth, but hard enough, like it'll last a good few days to weeks to months, depending on how your dog goes about it. So, um, we'll put a link up there, but they're absolutely awesome. And like I said, they're bone marrow. So— Sounds

expensive.

Heaps and heaps of— no, they're not crazy now. When they came out, they're a little bit trendy. But a lot of people are doing them now and have figured out how to make them. So the cost has come right down. But they're super healthy, like heaps of collagen and vitamins and all sorts of shit in there for your dog. That's really, really good. So they're another good bet as well if you've got a power chewer.

All right. So the question is, so for people who are listening to this going, I'd love to do all this, but my dog shows little to no interest in these things, would prefer to chew, you know, the remote control. How do I get my dog to get into this stuff?

So number one is supply and demand. Just think of it that way. A lot of dogs who have zero interest in toys have got the most toys laying around. Yeah. The biggest thing you can do at the moment, if you're really trying to get your dog into chewing, because, you know, you need them to chew this instead of that, or you need them to burn more energy off, whatever, is start packing everything away and just leave that one thing out. Think of when you used to go to a doctor's office as a kid, right? Is they've never got these riveting toys in there. At home, you've got your Xbox, your remote control car, your pushbike, the telly. You get to the doctor's office and it's a fucking train set with 3 wheels, but it ends up occupying you for 30 minutes because there's nothing else. Supply and demand. So same with our dog's chews. If you go out today and you're one of these dog mums that goes and gets all 6 things that it's recommended, rotate them. Hey, for a few days you get this, and then for a few days you get that. And then if, let's just say you get all 6 things on the list and that's 3 days each. In theory, it takes 18 days, over 2 weeks before they see their goat horn again. So when they see it, it's like, oh my God. Like, you know, when you get your dog something new, it's really exciting for a couple of days and they lose interest. They're kind of always in that because they play with their goat horn. They love it. Then you take it off and swap it. They play with their Ambit Chew. You take it off them. They swap it. Now they get their Kong and you just constantly rotate and just don't leave too much shit out and about.

I say this all the time. I'm going to say it again. It just, it's the same as having children. It's no different with our kids, with their toys. My wife will generally rotate toys because if you leave something out for too long, they get bored of it. Like, yeah. And they just never touch it, but we'll, She'll just take things and put them away and hide them for like a month and then all of a sudden bring them out and they're just like, oh my God. And then they'll sit and play with it for hours. Yeah. You know, it's just, it blows my mind how, how similar it is having a dog to having a child. It really is just so similar. And, and it's true. Like, I mean, you know, when Kira wasn't motivated by, by toys, it's because, you know, you go outside and there was like 3 or 4 things sitting around. Cause I thought that's what you do because the dog needs something to entertain it.

Yeah.

It's like, well, no, it doesn't need something to entertain it because dogs need to sleep during the day. She gets her entertainment when we go out and play and do training and that sort of stuff. And then we come home and when we come home, it's chill time.

Yeah, exactly. And it's like—

Or chew time.

And so I've told clients this before, they go, oh, that seems mean packing away their toys. I'm like, okay, right now you've left 10 toys out. Your dog doesn't play with one.

Yeah.

So like, what's more mean? Like almost killing their drive for toys to the point like you've spoiled them so much that now they have no interest in nothing.

They might pick up a rope for a second and sort of fling it around, but then they'll just wander off. Yeah. So like you can either leave 10

You can leave all 10 out, kill their motivation to play so they have zero desire, or you can just like just leave one out and that's it. And even then, like, we don't leave toys out. Toys come out for a finite period, then they go away. And it's like, okay, like, I don't leave toys out all day, but my dog spends more time playing than your dog. So like, which one's, which one's fairer? Which one's meaner?

Yeah, absolutely.

I wonder if Becky will hide your new microphone toy.

Yeah, no, this is, this is my domain. She cannot steal things from my office. That's why my PlayStation's in here. Uh, I'll have

to cut that out of the podcast. All right. Well, basically, if you've got any questions, as always, make sure you hit us up on the Facebook page, just search the Dog People Podcast, and we'll get your questions answered. The Dog People Podcast is a Mashed Pumpkin production hosted by Jack Lawrence and Max O'Neill. Edited, produced, and audio production by Jack Lawrence.

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You've never been one to settle, stand down, or stand still. You're a lifelong learner energized by excellence. There's a fire inside you you can't ignore. You've got competition to outrun, momentum to build on, and your own high standards to meet. Stop now? Not a chance. At Capella University, At Capella University, we help you catch what you're chasing because you've always had the drive. Now go earn the degree. Capella University. What can't you do? Visit capella.edu to learn more.