teeth grinding...

[LauraLynne]

hi - we're the parents of our rescued 2 year old boxerboy Gunner. He's been a part of our family for nearly 5 months now and we're learning as much as possible as we go in addition to all the info we knew from previous boxer ownership.. Gunner's new behavior has me stumped however (and is bothersome!). He's been grinding his teeth!! He swallows hard several times and then pushes his jaw together hard enough that his teeth grind! this has just been over the last couple of days. Any advice is appreciated - thanks!

 

[gmacleod]

Anything wrong inside his mouth at all? That would seem to me to be the first thing to have checked out.

If there's nothing wrong there, then my next thought is stress/anxiety. Chewing is thought to be a stress reliever for dogs, so the grinding could be a related way for him to calm himself down. I know it's a new behaviour, but is there any sort of pattern to when he does it or what's going on immediately beforehand?

If you can establish a cause or trigger, then you're on the way to finding a solution.

If there's really nothing physical going on, and you can't pinpoint any stress trigger, then you can only concentrate on reducing the teeth grinding itself. I'd suggest that you get him something to chew (not raw hides, pigs ears or anything else nasty like that) and give it to him any time he starts the grinding. Raw bones would be good, or a nylabone or kong if he's into those.

 

[Poetic_thing]

This was previously discussed before, here is the link.
[thread=58383]Click Here![/thread]

 

[LauraLynne]

thanks...

I did finally find the search feature and have been reading up. I'm guessing stress since we've got a visiting dog and the 2 of them are not getting along. Gunner wants to play with the visiting dog (a small chihuahua/daschund mix and a male as well :() but teh little dog feels threatened. We're trying to keep life as normal as possible with Gunner but the 2 of them still sometimes clash (they don't fight, they just put their noses in the air when they get too close to each other). Visiting dog goes home Wednesday so hopefully the teeth grinding will abate then too.
he's got lots of chew things but doesn't like to chew, he'll carry them around a put them all over the place but doesn't like chewing (he's rescued and has a very soft mouth, I suspect there was a lot of discipline when it comes to chewing previously)

Thanks for the advice!

 

[heidiho]

Glad I came across this. Palmer also grinds his teeth. Usually in the middle of the night. He has separation anxiety so I attribute his grinding to this. We had company during the holidays and he wasn't doing it. Too tired from everthing going on.