Ouch! Familiar? Puppies nipping and biting is the most common problem we all encounter. The thing is you can cope this whilst they are tiny but the kids don’t like it, visitors don’t like it and it gets more offensive and painful as they grow. Fortunately the solution is incredibly easy.
Letting your puppy know they have hurt you
When your puppy nips you when you try to stroke him/her or when you walk in the room, as soon as their teeth make contact you need to let out a loud high pitched yelp. As soon as you have done that you will notice your puppy back away. This replicates the sound that your puppies litter mates would have made when one of them bit each other too hard, known as bite inhibition. You can teach your puppy to stop biting quickly and effectively using this method.
What if my puppy doesn’t respond to yelping?
When training your puppy if they continue to nip or bite (after the initial yelp), turn your back, fold your arms and ignore your puppy for a few minutes. This will stop your puppy from being reinforced from biting. Effectively they bite, they lose all the attention that you were lavishing upon them. Puppies soon learn that attention is better than biting. Ask people petting your puppy or visiting your house to yelp and ignore in the same manner.
My puppy is biting me when playing with a toy.
If your puppy catches you with his teeth when playing with a toy exactly the same process is carried out. Make sure you don’t encourage them to use their mouths at other times (like play fighting) and that all family members are carrying out the same training method.
TOP TIP: If your puppy is extremely persistent (this is highly unusual) then you can spray some bitter apple/lemon spray (available from pet shops) on some gloves then play with your dog, pair it with the yelp and he will not be keen to bite down on you.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
10 Responses to this article
Ian Dunbar’s approach is similar but more thorough. The puppy needs not only to learn not to bite people in play, but also that he can control the strength of his bite. This is actually the first step.
Here is a link that describes the process.
http://putthepentothepaper.wordpress.com/2008/02/03/puppy-biting-by-ian-dunbar/
Hi, thanks for your comment.
Yes, I totally agree with you, controlling the strength of the bite is important and rather than the gaps in play i have encouraged a stop for five minutes in order to make things clearer for pet owners rather than a staged approach. I have been working on differing levels of yelps in conjunction with the pauses to create a greater awareness of bite inhibition. Do you have any experience with this?
Pretty nice post. I just came across your site and wanted to say
that I’ve really liked browsing your blog posts. Anyway
I’ll be subscribing to your blog and I hope you post again soon!
Thanks for the tip. We’ve been trying this tactic but we don’t see any progress yet (after a little over a week). Once we turn away, our 10-week old puppy typically comes up to us and starts biting our feet or ankles. We’ve also tried leaving the room, but he starts biting again when we go back. We put lemon juice on our hands, but he seems to like the taste. He is also chewing up his crate! He has plenty of chew toys. Any tips?
Okay well you may have to get a little more inventive. Get a water pistol or water bottle, continue with the steps but instead of ignoring and folding your arms give him a squirt and say ‘no’ at the same time. Some pup’s can be a little more persistent than others so you need to get a little stricter. If this continues, every time he bites pick him up with no communication and put him in another room for a few minutes. For the chewing have you seen the chewing article? You can also feed him his entire meal in a kong or feeder ball/cube. Metal crates are better, see the article teaching your pup to love his crate.Get back to me if you need a different strategy.
We have tried the yelp and ignore technique but our pup just keeps lunging at us and biting so we thought we would put him in a pen but as he leaps forward and lunges he then backs off so we can’t grab him. It is so frustrating he just ‘attacks’ us continually and will not settle down. He jumps all over us and the furniture, biting and scrabbling around. Then runs off and pinches things which we can’t get off him – If I have food he won’t leave me alone as he keeps hassling me for that! I am at my wits end. Any advice would be really appreciated. He gets 2 half hour walks in the morning, let out in the back garden for 20 minutes ‘ball play’ at lunchtime and about an hour to an hour and a half walk at night and a 20 min/half hour play in the garden before bed but nothing seems to tire him out. He is 4/5 months old and we think he is a collie x whippet. It is really important we settle him down as we have a toddler – never left together. He is pretty good with him though and will let him take things off him – but he won’t let us take them.
Okay try this link ’stealing’
With the food, have you fed him from the table? As soon as you start feeding your own food to the dog he will pester you for it constantly. Every one in the house needs to be strict with this. It is now going to get a little worse before it gets better as a process called extinction needs to take place, whereby you ignore the begging behaviour. You will have to go through an ‘extinction burst’ whereby he will try everything to get that food but if you all stay strong this will work and he will subside.
Try this for keeping his energy levels down ‘entertain’ paired with teaching him obedience like ’stay’
this will tire him out mentally. You are doing great giving that much exercise but its actually mentally he needs tiring rather than just physical.
As for the biting, with the mental stimulation this should calm down, however the more angry you get the worse it will get. When he lunges take his collar (wear some heavy gloves if you have to) and hold him steady. Do not talk to him or make eye contact but hold the collar low (so he cannot jump up at you). Wait for him to settle then release the hold a little, if he jumps up again hold the collar firmly again and lead him into another room or your garden and leave him there for one minute. Then try again. It is going to take a fair few repetitions before he understands, this behaviour get him NO attention. What is crucial with an excitable type of dog (i am guessing when you are affectionate he is very over the top in response?) is that you do not reward him too much when he is calm. You can give him a treat and say good in a very low and calm tone. Avoid physical touch with him to teach him boundaries (you can build up to this later). So when he stops jumping when you hold the collar do not make a huge fuss this will only start the cycle. Its a simple good dog, you could even drop a treat on the floor for him. The reward is he gets to stay around you, the punishment is being put in a another room for unacceptable behaviour.
Does this sound like something you would be able to do? I would not like to start using bottles with coins in etc with this type of dog as it is likely to set him off on an excitement or anxiety dash.
This is great advice. We also had an excitable puppy and for a few weeks I thought I was going to go crazy with the biting! The spray bottle (water) is what really worked for us, along with the yelps and ignoring. Unfortunately, my father lives in town and totally allows him to mouth his hands whenever he comes over (in fact encourages it), no matter how many times I explain that we don’t want our dog doing that! He also plays tug games with him which we don’t like either. So, how can I change my dad’s behavior?
Also, our dog is now 8 months old and behaves great in the house, generally, but does not respond as well to commands outside, and occasionally even jumps up or bites at shoes, only when we are outside. We have not spent a ton of time with him in the backyard – it has been his domain for potty and when we leave for longer than we want to crate him. Now the weather is getting nicer we want to be out there with him more and train him the same behavior rules apply. Ideas?
Hey
Great to hear from you. This is a common problem. It sounds as though he has learnt ‘in context’ ie. the training you have done with him has been in the house so he associates that as a trigger. It is also difficult to be as consistent out and about as we all generally just want to get to where we are going. When you walk him treat the walks as training sessions. So start by doing all the same training you have done with him but in the garden / yard and then repeat this in another session in front of your house. Then start widening the area (once he is behaving well in these areas). Begin in areas where he doesn’t get too excited ie. the dog park would be a bad place to start until he is brilliant on the street outside your house. Once you are getting the responses you want build up to slightly more excitement like having him complete training tasks as another dog walks by your house and so on.
As for your dad that is a lot more tricky lol. I would ask him to teach your dog a trick instead so that he can interact with him but in an appropriate way. If he doesn’t fancy that take around a ’special’ toy that he only gets to play with with your father (something non tuggable like a ball) and ask him to improve the retrieve and that it is important your dog does not mouth. You can also tell him that it is likely to cause children problems if they play with your dog as if he mouths a child it could be perceived as something much more serious which could land you in trouble legally.
We got our German Shepard at 6 weeks. He is 9.5 weeks now and very good except for the nipping. We have tried everything except for the pray bottle. He is very entergetic and no matter how much play time he gets he no longer wants to just be petted. I play with him with a toy bone on a rope for hours and he i still very entergetic. Any ther solutions to the nipping???