Dog Training: Teaching Dogs to Be Gentle with Toys

After writing this post, we had an overwhelming response asking for our secret to teaching Mr. B not to tear apart his toys. When we first got Mr. B, he was a pro chewer: ripping apart baseball mitts in minutes and quickly tearing through all of Miss M's toys.

Knowing we couldn't afford to keep buying new toys, we decided to train Mr. B to be more gentle. We know all dogs are different, but this is how we trained our Mr. B:
1) We reinforce positive toy-chewing behavior

Dogs really don't know that we get upset when they tear apart their toys, so we have to reinforce positive behavior by marking when they're gentle. We started by supervising all of his soft-toy chewing. Every time Mr. B would nibble on the toy we would associate the words "Yes gentle". When he licks the toy we say "Yes  kisses" and give him lots of head rubs.

2) We have a signal to let Mr. B know when we're disappointed

Dogs are in-tune with us and they don't want to hurt us. Like when Miss M first came to live with me she thought she was showing affection by mouthing and chewing on me. Every time she did that I pretended to cry or be in pain, and eventually she learned to stop that behavior. We do the same thing with the toys; every time he would become aggressive with the toy we would pretend to cry and he would stop chewing it. Then when he would lick it and become gentle we would give the positive reinforcement. Eventually we were able to stop the fake-crying and insert a mournful "Oh no!" which gives the same effect.

3) We supervised toy playings and kept chewing time to a minimum

We would supervise his soft-toy chewing and only allow it for short amounts of time before taking it away. Eventually, he built up the time and we trust him to chew on his own. Sometimes we hear him getting rough with the toy and we just take it away. But now that he understands how to play with toys,  he's content just laying with them in his tepee.

We know Mr. B is sensitive, but I wonder how this would work with most dogs. Or does anyone else have some other tips?

PS. If you like Mr. B, his former foster mom is now fostering this "Mr. B look-alike" that we've heard is just as sweet. Read more about him here.