Gun Dog Forum

Okay...not gun dog specific....figure it classifies as training just the same.
My 6 month old Brittany chews every bed I give it. Destroys them. I just put a new $25 crate mat in his crate, and 10 hours later I look in and it's in 300 pieces. Right now he's on the hard plastic floor of the crate b/c I refuse to give him anything else to chew.
We've tried the no-chew sprays....he doesn't mind it at all. I sprayed it directly on his tongue one time to try to get him to stop chewing carpet and it didn't even phase him. We exercise the dog a ton, work training with him 10-15 minutes 1 or 2 times per day (most days).... He has tons of chewy toys, plus I let him chew on my cat all he wants (they seem to be friends, it's not as mean as it sounds). We watch him like a hawk so he doesn't destroy kids toys and shoes, etc.... but when he's in his crate he's covered and we don't know what's going on (normally). If I put a blanket in with him that has no filling (he like to tear the filling out of things) it seems to make him try to dig under it, and we just hear insane scratching the whole time (not always...but when he's in the mood to dig I guess).
I have no ideas. I don't want to leave him without a soft thing to lay on in his crate, but I'm not going to keep buying him new beds.
My concern (aside from his discomfort) of not having anything in there with him is he could start chewing the kennel itself. I just bought him a new Dakota 283 kennel, and I'm going to melt down if he destroys it. He hasn't chewed on it yet....I'm just considering possibilities.
Ideas?

Bet he slows it down as he get's older. You might try rubbing some horse radish mustard on the stuff.

NOT saying this is the case , but the main reason for chewing stuff is a dog is not getting enough hard exercise daily. At 6 months he is almost at his prime for needing exercise. A walk around the block won't do it.

My last foster was a recalcitrant wood chipper. He chewed the bars of the crate, he chewed anything that he could reach from inside the crate including many things we thought were safe (like he could telemetry the stuff to the crate. He broke out of the crate (more than one) by bending and braking the metal door or a wire crate the same way. I'd get home and see metal shavings in his mouth and on his teeth. That said, the plastic clamshell of the crate remains undamage (except where he rammed the door so hard to snap the holes where I reinforced a padlock.)

That was a WalMart Kenne, I didn't have a Dakota. I think those things are well built enough that it shouldn't be that much of a concern. Deflect by throwing something for him to chew in there. Maybe even order the cheapest possible beds. In Bulk. Amazon Prime 10 of them or something.

And, even the crummiest of kennels, by design, can't have much of anything protruding inwards, for safety and probably for chewing reasons.