Puppy teething usually becomes obvious around 3–4 months, is often at its most intense between about 4 and 6 months, and most puppies have their adult teeth by around 6 months. During that time you can expect more chewing, sore-looking gums, occasional tiny spots of blood on toys and a puppy who suddenly thinks your furniture has enormous potential.
Teething is normal. It can also be uncomfortable, and it overlaps rather inconveniently with the age when puppy biting is already making many people question their life choices.
The useful bit is knowing what is actually teething, what helps, what needs a vet, and what is simply normal puppy behaviour happening at the same time.
Puppy Teething at a Glance
| Age | What is happening | What you might notice |
|---|---|---|
| Birth | Puppies are born without teeth | Nothing for you to do |
| About 2–4 weeks | Baby teeth begin erupting | Early mouthing as puppies develop |
| About 6–8 weeks | Most puppies have their 28 baby teeth | Those spectacularly sharp puppy teeth |
| About 3–4 months | Baby teeth begin loosening and adult teeth start replacing them | More chewing, tender gums, occasionally finding a tiny tooth |
| About 4–6 months | Active tooth replacement | Often the most obvious chewing/teething period |
| Around 6 months | Most of the 42 adult teeth are in | Teething settles, although normal chewing absolutely does not disappear |
These ages are a guide, not a deadline. Individual dogs vary. If what you really want is the tooth-by-tooth timing, I have a separate guide to when puppies lose their baby teeth.
What Does Puppy Teething Actually Mean?
Puppies are born without teeth. Their first set — 28 deciduous or baby teeth — erupts during early puppyhood. A few months later those teeth loosen and are replaced by 42 permanent adult teeth.
Most people mean this second phase when they say their puppy is teething: baby teeth are falling out, adult teeth are erupting and the gums can be uncomfortable.
You may find tiny teeth around the house, but don’t expect to collect a full puppy dentition like some deeply weird tooth fairy. Puppies commonly swallow baby teeth as they come out.
Signs Your Puppy Is Teething
- More chewing than usual
- Red, slightly swollen or tender-looking gums
- Small spots of blood on a chew or toy as a loose tooth comes out
- Drooling
- Occasional fussiness around the mouth
- Finding a tiny lost puppy tooth — although many are swallowed
- Wanting softer or cooler things to chew
What I wouldn’t automatically write off as teething is a fever, black/tarry stool, significant lethargy, persistent refusal to eat, heavy bleeding or a puppy who seems genuinely unwell. Teething happens at the same age as plenty of illnesses and gastrointestinal adventures. Don’t let “they’re teething” become the explanation for everything.
The Biggest Teething Red Flag: Retained Baby Teeth
Have a look in your puppy’s mouth occasionally. If an adult tooth is erupting beside the corresponding baby tooth and that baby tooth is still firmly hanging around, ask your vet to check it.
Retained deciduous teeth are particularly worth watching for in smaller dogs and dogs with crowded mouths. They can affect how the adult tooth sits and create places for debris to collect. That’s much more useful to watch for than waiting for some arbitrary age and assuming everything is fine until then.
What Helps a Teething Puppy?
Mostly? Chewing. Which is slightly inconvenient when the puppy’s preferred medical device appears to be your skirting board.
With Indie, texture mattered. He preferred softer things while he was teething, and yes, some of them ended up with little blood spots on them as those puppy teeth came out. Rather than trying to stop the need to chew, give the puppy safer ways to satisfy it.
1. Match the texture your puppy is looking for
If your puppy repeatedly seeks rubbery things, offer an appropriately sized rubber chew. If they like softer textures, try puppy-safe soft toys or a supervised damp washcloth. A stuffed and chilled or frozen Kong (this one works well) can be particularly useful because you get chewing, cold and enrichment together.
Avoid assuming harder is better. Very hard chews can damage teeth, and anything that breaks into swallowable pieces becomes a different problem entirely. Choose for your individual puppy’s size and chewing style, supervise, and inspect chews regularly.
2. Use cool or frozen options
A damp washcloth chilled or frozen and offered under supervision can feel lovely on sore gums. Food toys can also be chilled or frozen. You don’t need an elaborate £40 puppy teething system. Sometimes cold, wet fabric is apparently luxury dentistry.
3. Puppy-proof before the chewing happens
Management is training’s less glamorous best friend. Move cables, shoes, medication and anything dangerous or precious out of reach. Use gates or a puppy pen when you can’t supervise closely. My puppy-proofing guide goes through the bigger safety job.
I also wouldn’t hand over an old shoe and then expect your puppy to understand that the expensive nearly-identical shoe beside it belongs to a different legal category. Give them things that are clearly theirs.
4. Make eating easier if their mouth is tender
If your puppy is otherwise bright and well but hard kibble seems uncomfortable, adding water and allowing it to soften can make meals easier. But a puppy who genuinely won’t eat, seems painful or seems ill deserves veterinary advice rather than us repeatedly blaming their teeth.
Teething and Puppy Biting Are Not Quite the Same Thing
This is one of the distinctions I really want puppy guardians to understand.
Teething can absolutely increase the urge to put things in the mouth, but puppy biting is also normal social behaviour, play, exploration, excitement and — very commonly — an overtired puppy losing whatever tiny amount of impulse control they possessed earlier in the day.
So if your puppy is attached to your trouser leg at 7pm, don’t assume solving their sore gums will magically solve puppy biting. Offer an appropriate toy, make the toy worth biting, check whether they need the toilet, consider whether they’ve been awake too long and help them regulate rather than punishing them.
I’ve got a full guide to when puppies stop biting and what actually helps. If you’re properly in the land-shark trenches, my Little Book of Puppy Biting takes you through the process in much more detail.
Should You Yelp or Say “Ow” When Your Puppy Bites?
I wouldn’t rely on it.
For some puppies a yelp simply makes the human considerably more exciting — congratulations, you are now a squeaky toy. For others, making something unpleasant happen when teeth touch skin isn’t the relationship I want to build.
I’d rather calmly redirect onto something appropriate, make that choice rewarding and look at why the biting is happening. Often the most useful intervention is sleep, distance from whatever has wound them up, or a decent chew.
Can You Play Tug With a Teething Puppy?
Yes, you don’t need to ban tug simply because adult teeth are coming in. Keep it appropriate to the puppy: let them control much of the pressure, avoid violent jerking or wrenching on a sore mouth, and stop if they appear uncomfortable.
Tug also does not cause aggression. For many bitey puppies, a nice long tug toy is incredibly useful because it puts an appropriate target between their teeth and your hands.
Start Mouth Handling — But Don’t Make Sore Gums Miserable
Teething is a good reminder to build comfortable mouth handling, but cooperative care doesn’t mean holding a puppy still and poking at tender gums until they “get used to it.”
Start tiny: briefly lift a lip, reward, stop. Touch the outside of the muzzle, reward, stop. Build toward checking teeth and eventually tooth brushing when your puppy is comfortable. The goal is a dog who participates willingly in care, not one who has learned they can’t escape it.
When Should a Teething Puppy See a Vet?
- An adult tooth is erupting beside a retained baby tooth
- Heavy or persistent bleeding
- Marked swelling, pus or a foul smell from the mouth
- A broken tooth, particularly if you can see pink/red tissue inside
- A tooth appears to be erupting in an abnormal position
- Your puppy refuses food rather than simply preferring it softened
- Your puppy seems significantly painful, lethargic or generally unwell
- Anything about the mouth simply doesn’t look right to you
And please don’t give human pain medication or human teething gels unless your veterinarian specifically tells you to. Puppies are not tiny humans pharmacologically, however committed they may be to behaving like toddlers.
When Does Puppy Teething End?
For most puppies, the active baby-teeth-out/adult-teeth-in stage is largely finished around six months, although there is individual variation.
What does not end at six months is chewing. Dogs chew because it is enjoyable, enriching, soothing and simply very dog. If your adolescent still loves chewing things, that doesn’t mean they’re somehow still teething indefinitely.
Keep providing safe chewing outlets, keep the environment sensible, and keep an eye on those adult teeth as they settle in.
The Short Version
Puppy teething is a phase to support, not a behaviour to correct. Give your puppy appropriate things to chew, use management so they aren’t constantly practising on your belongings, keep biting and teething in their proper separate boxes, and check the mouth often enough to catch retained baby teeth or anything else unusual.
It can feel relentless while you’re in it. Then one day you realise the tiny needles are gone and your puppy has a completely different set of teeth. Unfortunately, they remain fully capable of stealing your socks.
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