Lab puppy stealing senior dogs' chew toys

A 9-month Lab raiding the senior dogs' toy stash is a very specific kind of chaos — and it usually means the puppy doesn't have something engaging enough of their own. The right chew toy for a serious chewer needs to be durable enough to last but not so hard it risks cracking teeth, and the right choice depends a lot on jaw strength and chewing style. Before I point you in the right direction: how big is the puppy now, would you say he's a moderate chewer or does he destroy things, and is the stealing mostly about boredom or is he genuinely fixated on whatever the older dogs have?

Right, so you've got three large Labs and a puppy who treats rope toys as a light snack — that tells me a lot. Before I make a specific suggestion, one quick question: are the older dogs using stuffed Kongs or solid rubber chews? I want to know whether the issue is the puppy wanting what looks interesting because it's filled with something, or whether he'd steal a plain rubber toy just as readily.

That's actually useful — if the senior Kongs aren't getting much use, the puppy stealing them probably is boredom. A filled Kong gives him a job to do, which is exactly what a 9-month Lab needs. Here's my recommendation: get the Kong Classic in XL size for the puppy, and start stuffing it with something worth working for — peanut butter and banana frozen overnight is the classic move. The XL handles a 30kg aggressive chewer at this age, and the rubber compound is tough enough that he won't destroy it the way he has the rope toys. The senior dogs likely lost interest in their Kongs because they weren't being refreshed with anything interesting — if you want to reinvigorate those too, the same stuffing trick works. But give the puppy his own designated filled Kong and you'll find the stealing drops significantly because he'll have something better to do.

Good question and worth clarifying. The pink and blue puppy Kongs are designed for younger pups with softer rubber to account for developing teeth — typically under 9 months. At 9 months a Lab is essentially through the worst of teething, and at 30kg he has the jaw strength that would make a puppy Kong a short-term solution at best. The Classic XL in the standard black rubber is the right call here — it's the toughest compound Kong make for the Classic range and it's what I'd give any large-breed aggressive chewer from this age onwards. You're not going to damage his teeth with it, and he's not going to destroy it in a week.

The Kong will do most of the work if it's properly stuffed and frozen — a frozen Kong takes a serious chewer 20 to 30 minutes, which burns a surprising amount of mental energy. But if the stealing persists, the most effective thing is to feed them their Kongs in separate spaces for the first few weeks, so the puppy learns that his Kong is his thing. Once he's reliably engaged with his own, you can relax the separation. The stealing is almost entirely a boredom and novelty issue at this age — give him something genuinely challenging and he won't need to poach from the older two.