10/08/2026
Puppy owners...this is a great article that I saw posted by Paws Academy Dog Training about chewing, biting, and baby to adult dentition. It's worth the read!
Puppy teething is a LOT more than a few tiny teeth falling out... and I think we sometimes forget just how much physical change is going on inside that little mouth while we're trying to deal with the biting at the other end of it. A puppy starts with 28 deciduous (baby) teeth and ends up with 42 permanent teeth. In between those two numbers there is root resorption, teeth loosening and being shed, permanent teeth developing and erupting, alongside continued development of the jaw. And all of that is happening during the same few months when many owners are telling me their puppy has suddenly become obsessed with chewing everything they can get hold of.
Those 42 adult teeth aren't simply bigger replacements for the original 28 either. Puppies don't have deciduous molars, so some of the permanent dentition is appearing without replacing a baby version at all. Where a permanent tooth does replace a deciduous tooth, the root of that baby tooth is gradually resorbed as part of the normal process of it being shed. This is why the tiny teeth people occasionally find on the floor can look rather different from what they expected. Quite often you won't find them anyway because puppies can swallow them.
So yes... teething can absolutely affect behaviour. You may see more chewing and mouthing, a puppy suddenly seeking particular textures, spending longer chewing something, or seeming generally more bothered by their mouth for a while. There might occasionally be a small amount of blood on a toy as a tooth is lost. Some puppies appear much more affected by this stage than others, and it isn't necessarily consistent from one day to the next. Different teeth are erupting at different times, so it isn't one single event that starts one morning and finishes neatly a few weeks later. It is a process.
What I don't do, though, is look at every bite from a puppy of teething age and decide “oh, they're teething”. We talked in a previous post about fatigue biting, frustration, overstimulation, movement and play, attention-seeking behaviour and physical discomfort, and those things don't disappear because permanent teeth happen to be erupting at the same time. You can have a puppy with an uncomfortable mouth who has also been awake for far too long. Or one who is teething but has just grabbed your trouser leg because moving fabric is incredibly good fun. Sometimes several things are sitting on top of one another, which is why just labelling all biting at this age as teething isn't particularly useful.
And this is also a good example of a distinction I often make between dog training and behaviour work, although obviously there is crossover and good professionals in both fields should continue their education well beyond their original qualification. A trainer will generally be working predominantly with the behaviour we want to teach or change. A behaviourist should have the broader knowledge to ask what might be contributing to that behaviour before deciding how to change it. Development and physiology matter. Pain matters. Sleep, emotional state, environment, previous learning and what happened immediately around the behaviour can matter too. Sometimes training is absolutely part of the answer, but I don't want to train a puppy as though their body isn't involved in what they're doing.
For a teething puppy, that means I want sensible chewing opportunities available rather than spending the entire day taking things out of their mouth. I like having a few appropriate textures available and rotating things because what a puppy wants to chew can change during teething. Some puppies enjoy suitable chilled options when their gums are uncomfortable. Whatever you're giving them still needs to be safe for that individual puppy, appropriate for their size and supervised where necessary, and I wouldn't deliberately reach for something incredibly hard simply because they can't destroy it. Permanent teeth can fracture too, so “indestructible” isn't automatically a good quality in something we're asking a dog to bite down on.
There is also one dental change I would specifically keep an eye out for as those permanent teeth start coming through. Normally the deciduous tooth is lost as its permanent successor erupts, but occasionally the baby tooth remains in place and you can see the permanent tooth appearing alongside it. That's a persistent deciduous tooth. It needs veterinary assessment rather than months of waiting to see whether it eventually sorts itself out, because having both teeth occupying that area can affect positioning and contribute to crowding and other dental problems. And please don't be tempted to pull a loose puppy tooth yourself. A wobbly tooth is part of a normal process, but anything that doesn't look right is a conversation for your vet.
The timing on the graphic is deliberately given as a guide rather than a diary that every puppy should follow. Deciduous teeth begin erupting when puppies are only a few weeks old, permanent teeth start appearing at roughly four to five months, and by around seven months the permanent dentition is generally present. Individual teeth vary and individual dogs vary as well. So I wouldn't be panicking because somebody else's puppy on Facebook lost a particular tooth three weeks before yours did. I'd be much more interested in whether your own puppy's mouth appears to be progressing normally and whether there is anything unusual that needs a vet to have a look.
And when the evening land shark appears, I still wouldn't automatically reach for a frozen chew and assume we've solved it because the puppy is teething. Have a think about how much sleep they've had as well. Look at what they've been doing for the previous hour or two, whether the day has been unusually busy and whether the biting tends to appear at roughly the same point in their routine. Give them appropriate ways to use their mouth, absolutely... but don't forget there's still an entire puppy attached to those teeth. 💛
