Puppy biting-what worked for you?

[gale]

Our pup is about 12 wks old and is quite a nipper. She is especially bad on my 8 yo and somewhat bad on my 11 yo. Seems like she's worse about biting their clothes and shoes (and my son's glasses-grr) than their skin (like me-she apparently loves the taste of my skin). We have tried the loud yelp and ignore-didn't work. We tried the holding her face and saying NO BITING in a stern voice but the kids are not too good at that method and it's only somewhat effective. Sometimes it seems to make her worse for a minute. Any other ideas? She seems pretty smart. She is really good about sitting on command after just a few tries. She even sits for her food which is a big deal, because she always acts like she's starving when we feed her.

[Doberluv]

Grabbing and holding her face, being stern with a baby is very apt to make it worse and in fact cause defensiveness in your puppy.....long term possible consequences. Remember, she's a baby dog and this is NORMAL behavior for a dog puppy. To her, she is doing what she is hard wired to do for survival....learning about her environment by mouthing things, teething, practicing for the hunt, learning how to socialize with others. All normal.

This is the absolute best article I have read on teaching bite inhibition. I highly recommend it.

http://www.shirleychong.com/keepers/archives/bite.txt

She'll be fine. It sounds like you're doing lots of good things with her. Kudos. Let her be a puppy and with good handling and maturity, she'll turn out great.

[malmo]

Yup. That's the bite inhibition article I have used and it worked like a charm.

Now, it didn't work like an OVERNIGHT charm. But, with about a month of consistency, things got dramatically better.

12-week-old pup is still very young. Pick a good, humane method of teaching bite inhibition and really stick with it. Be patient as you are working both with and against your dog's instincts.

[OsaBarbosa]

We just went through this so I feel your pain (literally). We would do the yelp, ignore and it didn't seem to work at first but after a while, it worked great. Also, if you can get her to sit, praise for sitting, then no moving/ignoring, that also works. Our puppy would try to bite at us at play and if we tried to walk away to ignore, she would follow in a biting fury. We would get her to sit, praise for sitting then would just stand still and look the other way. She would get bored after about 4 seconds and would run off to grab her toys. Also make sure you have a chew toy to stuff in their mouth and praise when they start chewing on that.

Also, a squirt gun shot to the back of the head works pretty well too. Make sure its not in the face or mouth because you don't want your puppy to know it is water (to them, it's puppy repellant).

[Lilavati]

Wow! Great article. That's going into practice today.

By the way, do you think it woudl also work with accidental mouthing? Sometimes when she's panting or worked up, she'll scrape her teeth on me. Its clearly accidental, and it doesn't hurt, but I want her to learn to be more careful before she scares someone else with it.

[Doberluv]

Dogs will sometimes knock their teeth on you or bite by accident when playing. Abruptly just stopping playtime with them, walking off without a word will teach them that the fun ends when teeth hurt you. It takes time and consistancy for the pup to separate that one single behavior from all the other behaviors he may be doing at the time. He has to guess what it is he did which made the good stuff go away. That takes many reps, real consistancy and time. But they do get it.

[malmo]

Milo treats my skin like fragile porcelain because I was consistent with bite inhibition work even when the touch was accidental. As a result, he treats all human skin -- even that of babies, toddlers, and mean adolescents -- as porcelain. It's been great for us.

Sometimes, if we're playing (and this is 6 years later) and he accidentally touches my hand with his tooth, he'll stop, look worried, and lick the spot. It's a great training tool, but it does take time and consistency.

[gale]

Thanks for the link-I'm printing it out now and it will be required reading for all of us. Hopefully it will work-she almost bit a hole in my crocs today. That is a serious offense.

[gale]

Oh another thing. The article mentions clicking. This isn't something we were planning on using. Is it worth getting a clicker for this alone? If you click for some things do you have to use it for everything? I don't think we would always be consistent with clicking because there are so many of us interacting with the puppy. Will praise work in place of the click?

[adojrts]

Clicker training is always worth it in my opinion.

I started a few years ago, to teach pups that if they felt flesh (fingers, toes etc) to immediately go to a soft mouth or you could also teach them to release completely. It has been very successful for me on several litters. (Jrts).
I start when a pup is *calm*, I put a finger gently into their mouth, no poking, pinching, pressing or forcing the finger in.
When the pup opens their mouth a bit or moves their mouth away from my finger, I click and reward. Usually within a couple of times the pups will remove their mouths from around my finger, then they get a jackpot of rewards. When the behaviour is solid, I do it during some moderate play and build to playing tug and having them very excited. When playing in this state, I put my finger in the mouth WHILE they are tugging. They let go. It has yet to fail me. But the key is to not force your finger in and to always click and reward.
No matter how rough I play with the pups or my adult dogs, they never make a mistake and if they start to feel flesh they instantly let go. Good dogs.
When I have the pups reliable with me, our young son then continues with the training.
It takes some time but it is well worth the effort espeically if the pups or dogs live with young children.

Lynn

[Doberluv]

You absolutely don't have to use a clicker. And if you discover what fun and how very, very effective clicker training is, you still don't have to use it for everything. It is used to teach a behavior. Once the dog is doing the behavior reliably, you no longer need the clicker for that behavior. It is used as a marker to show the dog what he just did which is earning him the reward. Google Clicker Solutions. It's a great bunch of training articles.

[luvmyswissy]

Here is a great place to help and understand what helps and why it is important.

http://www.perfectpaws.com/bite.html

[LB2007]

Mine was biting all the time and I couldnt touch his head, but I have noticed the last couple of weeks he is now allowing me to gently pet him and he is not raising back his head as if to play bite. I used the method a gentle wrap around the muzzle and say NO BITE and repeated it over and over. He seemed to have gotten the idea. I do not encourage him to play bite with my hands, I leave all biting for his toys. My husband however, allows this:mad: which urks me, as the puppy gets confused. But when I see him allowing it, I stop it pronto. What i did instead is allowd him to lick my hands instead after the muzzle was shut for a couple seconds. I was not rough nor agressive, but simply no bite and it seemed to have worked.

The very same with jumping up, it is a simple OFF and I moved his paws a few times and he had not jumped again, dont know if he will again, but so far he has not been doing it.