Teething Puppy? Read this!

Do you have a puppy between 3-4 months old? If so, they’re probably going through teething! 🦷🐶

Though it’s all pretty common, normal stuff, a lot of new puppy owners don’t realize how different behaviours, symptoms and such are all linked to the teething experience, and it can definitely help to understand that! Let's dive in...

🦷 Teething timeline

At around 3-4 months old, your puppy will start to lose their baby teeth.

They lose a total of 28 puppy teeth during teething, and make room for 42 permanent adult teeth! Their adult teeth are way thicker and rounded, compared to the razor sharp “needle” type teeth they have as a puppy.

They can be in the process of losing baby teeth until around 6 months old.

🩸 Is that blood?

If you find a spot of blood on their toys or bed, before freaking out, check their mouth and see if they’ve lost a tooth! 

It’s common to find their lost teeth on the floor, but they also swallow them quite often too. It’s completely safe for this to happen, so don’t worry.

Teething can also make their breath stinky (kinda metalic or iron-y).

🦴 Desire to chew

Puppies want to chew and gnaw things more prior to and during losing their baby teeth to relieve the pressure and discomfort of their adult teeth coming in. 

Making sure they have appropriate things to chew is helpful. You can freeze some rubber teething toys, or a kong with some raw food or peanut butter in it. 

Also, seems like a no-brainer, but don’t do tug-of-war play while their teeth are wiggly ;)

🥩 Food disinterest

Did you know? Your puppy can have less of an appetite when they’re losing their baby teeth.

If you notice they’re not quite as food motivated or aren’t finishing all their meals, this could very well be related to teething. 

Something that frequently happens when dogs don’t eat as often is...

🤮 Hungry puking

Not directly related to teething, but something many owners don’t know is the lack of regular food intake can cause what’s called “hungry puking”. Hungry puke is typically the colour and consistency of a raw egg yolk, and will occur if it’s been too long in-between eating, causing the stomach acid to build up. 

To avoid hungry puking (if they’re not motivated to eat all their regular food), you can make up some plain scrambled eggs, cool them off and see if they’ll eat some of that! Bone broth is amazing too.

🫠 Mood changes

Also not talked about enough is that teething CAN affect your puppy’s mood and behaviour, just like a baby! 

If they’re more clingy, irritable, uncertain or restless, that is all normal as they are agitated by this process.

Make sure they’re getting opportunity to chew, and also enough sleep! Puppies need frequent and uninteruppted rest to be their best selves.

---

We hope this post helped you!

Share it with a new puppy parent 🦷🐶

-The RLD Team