Breaking the Chewing Habit

Every puppy chews, and a Maltese puppy chews with a jaw small enough that it goes for the things you least expect: phone cables, shoelaces, the corner of a rug, a chair leg at exactly its own height. Most of it has a reason, and the reason decides the cure.

Teething

The baby teeth come through from about four weeks and the adult set is usually in by six or seven months, and for most of that time the gums hurt. A teething puppy is not being naughty; it is doing the only thing that helps. Correcting it is pointless and unkind. What works is giving it something better to chew than the furniture: a soft rubber toy, a cold damp washcloth twisted and frozen, a small nylon chew, kept in a box the puppy learns to go to. Keep the toys appropriately small. Anything a puppy can get its whole mouth round can be swallowed, and anything hard enough to break a tooth, including bones and antlers, is wrong for a jaw this size.

Watch for baby teeth that do not fall out when the adult ones arrive, especially the canines. Retained baby teeth are common in toy breeds and crowd the adult teeth into bad positions; your vet will usually remove them at the same time as a spay or neuter.

Boredom

A puppy left alone with nothing to do for hours will find something, and what it finds will be yours. Chewing from boredom is the easiest kind to prevent and the hardest to cure once it has become a habit. When you cannot watch the puppy, put it in its pen or crate with its own toys, and leave a radio on; a Maltese is a social dog and silence is a punishment to it. When you can watch, play with it. Ten minutes of fetch down a hallway burns off more mischief than an hour of being told no.

Catching it in the act

If the puppy has something it should not, take it quietly, say a calm "no", and put a proper toy in its mouth instead, then praise it for chewing that. The lesson is not "chewing is bad", which the puppy cannot learn, but "chew these, not those", which it can. Shouting, swatting or pushing the puppy's face into the damage teaches it that hands are a threat, and a Maltese that is frightened of hands is a worse problem than a chewed shoe.

Making the house less chewable

Cables off the floor or inside a cover, shoes in a cupboard, the puppy confined to the rooms you can see. A bitter-tasting spray from a pet shop on chair legs and skirting boards works on most puppies and is harmless. The puppy proofing page goes room by room. Chewing fades on its own after the adult teeth are in, provided it has not been allowed to become the puppy's main entertainment in the meantime.