Is My Dog Chewing Out of Boredom or Anxiety?

By Jessica Ennis, DVM, CVA

✓ Medically reviewed by Jessica Ennis, DVM, CVA — August 6, 2026 For general education — not a substitute for veterinary care.

Behavior · August 10, 2026 · 6 min read

Boredom chewing shows up when you leave; anxiety chewing shows up before you even reach the door.

A three-year-old goldendoodle named Wren came into my exam room because her owners had replaced two remote controls, a pair of reading glasses, and half a baseboard in six weeks. They assumed she was bored. What tipped me off that it wasn’t just boredom: the chewing started the moment they picked up their car keys, not twenty minutes after they left. She’d also started panting and pacing near the front door before they’d even said goodbye. Boredom chewing and anxiety chewing can look identical from the damage alone, but the timeline around it almost always gives the real answer away.

The short version: boredom chewing tends to be steady, spread across the day, and satisfied by better enrichment. Anxiety chewing clusters around departures, arrivals, or specific triggers, and it comes with other stress signals — panting, drooling, pacing, self-focused licking. Getting this distinction right matters because the fixes are different. More toys won’t touch a genuinely anxious dog, and calming supplements won’t fix a dog who’s simply understimulated.

What boredom chewing actually looks like

A bored dog chews because chewing is intrinsically rewarding and there’s nothing better competing for its attention. This is the dog who goes through a favorite toy but will also work through a couch cushion, a shoe, or a corner of drywall if nothing else is available. It tends to happen throughout the day, not concentrated around any one event, and it often improves fast once you introduce food puzzles, longer walks, or scheduled chew sessions with something appropriately tough.

The giveaway is context. A bored dog left with three chew toys, a walk that morning, and a stuffed frozen Kong will usually settle for the Kong. An anxious dog in the same setup may ignore all three and instead work on a doorframe or windowsill — the spots tied to entry and exit, not the spots with the most interesting texture.

What anxiety chewing looks like instead

Anxiety-driven chewing is a coping behavior, not a boredom outlet, and the targets usually give it away: door frames, window sills, crates, anything near where the owner last stood. It’s frequently paired with other signs of distress — drooling, whining, house soiling, or attempts to escape a crate or room. Dogs with separation-related anxiety can also injure their mouths or nails trying to get through a barrier, which is not something you typically see from a dog who’s just under-exercised.

I’ve had owners set up a camera expecting to catch a dog “acting out,” and instead they see a dog who is calm for the first ten minutes, then begins pacing, panting, and chewing at the exact moment a delivery truck passes or a neighbor’s door slams. That’s not boredom. That’s a trigger response, and it needs a different plan than a bigger toy basket.

Ruling things out before you label it either one

Before deciding it’s purely behavioral, rule out anything physical. Teething in puppies under seven months causes a very specific, mouth-focused chewing pattern that isn’t about boredom or anxiety at all. In adult dogs, sudden new chewing — especially chewing paired with pawing at the mouth, drooling, or reluctance to eat hard food — can point to a dental problem, not a behavior one. A dog who growls when petted is often communicating discomfort the same way a dog who suddenly starts chewing furniture may be: worth a look before you assume it’s purely psychological.

Puppies also blur this picture further, since normal exploratory mouthing overlaps with both categories. If you’re dealing with a young dog, it helps to separate developmental mouthing from the boredom-versus-anxiety question entirely — the approach to stopping puppy biting and mouthing is different again from either adult pattern.

Where calming ingredients fit, and where the evidence is thin or strong

Once anxiety looks like the driver, owners often ask about calming chews. The honest answer is that the evidence varies a lot by ingredient, and it’s worth knowing which is which before you spend money on one.

L-theanine has some of the more specific human data behind it: a review noted a meaningful effect in one study on anxiety, with a dose of Molecular Psychiatry: 400 mg/day for 8 weeks in that particular trial — though that same review also flagged it as an exception among the studies it covered, not a universal finding. Ashwagandha has broader support: a systematic review in Cureus concluded that ashwagandha has a moderate positive impact on stress reduction and cognitive performance across the RCTs it analyzed. Chamomile is the weakest of the three on paper — a review in Biomedicines noted that for most species, evidence for chamomile’s effect on anxiety and stress is derived mainly from preclinical studies or traditional use, not controlled clinical trials in dogs.

None of this means calming supplements are a cure for separation anxiety or destructive chewing — they’re not, and I don’t present them that way to clients. They may help support a calmer baseline while you also fix the underlying trigger. A dog chewing through a crate door because the owner leaves for ten-hour shifts needs a desensitization plan, more exercise, and possibly a veterinary behaviorist — not just an ingredient swap.

What actually changes the behavior

For boredom chewing: more physical exercise, food-dispensing toys, rotating chew options, and supervised access rather than free run of the house. Most of these dogs improve within one to two weeks of consistent changes.

For anxiety chewing: management first — crate training done correctly, departure cues desensitized in small steps, and a consistent routine — then, if needed, a conversation with your vet about anti-anxiety medication or referral to a veterinary behaviorist. This is slower work, often measured in months, not days.

In my practice, the dogs who improve fastest are the ones whose owners stop treating it as a single problem with a single fix. Wren, the goldendoodle from the start of this piece, turned out to have both pieces going on — some genuine boredom during long workdays, and real anxiety tied specifically to the sound of keys. Her owners added a decompression walk before they left, changed how they picked up their keys (quietly, well before actually leaving), and worked with a trainer on desensitizing the departure cues themselves. The chewing didn’t stop overnight, but within about six weeks the destruction had moved from “daily” to “rare,” and it was almost always tied to an unusually long day rather than a trigger event. That kind of gradual, traceable change is what tells you the plan is actually working, as opposed to just getting lucky for a few days.

Where I land with owners

If I had to give one piece of advice, it’s this: watch the clock and the location before you watch the damage. What got chewed matters less than when it happened and what else the dog was doing around it. A dog who chews steadily throughout a long day, anywhere in the house, is telling you a different story than a dog who chews only at the door in the first ten minutes alone. Treat them differently, and don’t expect a calming chew to substitute for the management work — it’s support, not a fix.

If your dog is showing signs that look more like fear than either boredom or excess energy — for instance a stiff body, a hard stare, or what’s sometimes called whale eye — that’s worth flagging to your vet or a certified trainer alongside the chewing itself, since it may point to broader anxiety rather than a chewing-specific issue.