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How to stop biting puppy
Hocky27
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I recently bought a cute Maltese terrier puppy & whilst she is as cute as anything she has the habit of biting peoples hands & feet. How can I get her to stop biting ? So far I have just been gently hitting her & saying "no" every time she bites.
Hocky27 on
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From what I have read DO NOT HIT DOGS. From everything I read and people I talked to, they can all agree on that.
I also been using a spray bottle and spraying him every time he starts biting, as well as having plenty of toys to distract him with. The issue with that is that no matter what he ends up finding my hand more interesting.
But seriously.
Don't hit her, even a little bit. If your dog bites you, and you hit her, she will think one of two things: either you are roughhousing with her and playing (so she should bite you back again because it's fun!) or you are hurting her and trying to dominate her (so she should bite you back again to resist you!). No matter what she thinks, you're doing the opposite of discouraging her biting.
Instead, redirect it. If you're playing with her, and she nips at your hand, say "No" firmly, then give her a chew toy and praise her when she noms it. If she keeps nipping, say "No" firmly, then stand up and refuse to play with her until she calms down.
If while playing, the easiest way is to ham it up. Seriously. When she bites, overreact. Pull your hand/foot away quickly and loudly yell out, then don't play with her for awhile. Goes along with natural mechanism used by dogs in a pack.
On a whim? She may be teething, in which case do the above, or, go 'momma dog' and lightly grab her by the nape of the neck and move her away from you. If the latter, try to not pick her up more than 60 degrees. You're positioning her, not throwing her. At any rate, afterward, give her an ice cube to chew on.
If she's just in her bitey phase, do the overreact/momma dog thing, then give her something acceptable to chew on. Rubber chew toys are ok, but tend to be rent asunder rather quickly by puppy teeth, in my experience. I prefer rawhide rings.
If neither of the above fit/work, she's probably trying to exude dominance. This is bad. When this happens, or if the above for some reason escalate the problem (rare, known to happen, dogs are weird), instead of doing the overreact/momma dog thing, when she bites your hand insert your thumb under her tongue and hold her lower jaw. She's not going to like it, mind, but hold her there for about five to ten seconds.
During those five to ten seconds, and I know this may sound hammy, but position her head so that you can look her in the eye and tell her "No" in a commanding voice. Hold her there for a few seconds longer then release.
For the feet biting in the dominance area, give her a light flick/thump (Good test for severity of flick/thump, hold your hand suspended over you keyboard and put your index finger over a key. Then, flick/thump your index knuckle. If you cause a key to press then you're probably hitting too hard for this exercise... you're just trying to get her attention.) in between her rear hips and do the "No"-with-commanding-voice-thing again.
Other than that, I got nothing. Note that it may take about a week or two for these to work, but it has to be a consistent and ongoing thing.
If your dogs are less than 12 weeks old, you don't want to teach them to stop biting right away. First you need to teach them to use their mouth gently, then teach them to stop biting. Basically, make a game where you invite the puppy to use their mouth on you and make it really fun, and it ends if they bite too hard. Over the course of a couple of weeks, gradually decrease the amount of pressure the puppy can use until they are touching your skin but not even denting it. Ideally, you would have the puppy on a leash and attach the leash to something heavy and just turn your back on the puppy and be about a foot outside of the range of the leash for about 30 seconds when they bite too hard.
With an older dog who just uses their mouth a lot, or after you have taught your puppy to be gentle, then teach them not to bite. Don't trick the dog by playing the same game you did above where you invited mouthy play, but anytime teeth touch skin the fun ends. With an older dog you will probably have to make the time outs a little bit more dramatic, leave the room for a minute or two.
If your dog is teething (~4-7 months), just keep tons of things you want them to chew on around and redirect them to one of those any time they start to chew on anything you don't want them to chew on, including yourself. Pain can make dogs forget their training.
If your dog only bites when really really excited, work on general impulse control. Teach them to leave a treat in your hand, teach them a stay. A really really excited dog isn't going to be able to learn anything in the moment, so just prevent the biting until the dog can think through excitement/gets less excited.
If you want a better explanation of teaching bite inhibition, the third book on this page can be downloaded for free and discusses it in detail.
More seriously though, follow Kistra's advice, it's correct. I have an Akita that I brought into the home alongside an 18mo old boy... the dog was quickly taller than the child, and rapidly larger than all three of my kids, so we knew "gentle-mouthing" the dog would be critical to keeping him. Kistra's advice works perfectly. If you want him to get the message faster or if the leash + withholding affection trick doesn't work on its own, do this: when he bites too hard yelp really loud, then go silent and flip him over on his stomach and glare in his eyes until he looks away from you. Then get up and face away from the puppy until he comes to submissivly apologize. After that, just go back to treating him normally.
Also, you can take the dog for a good long walk before training him if you're having trouble with excitability inhibiting the lesson.
You have a one month old puppy? Do you also have the mother and the rest of the litter? If someone sold this puppy to you, should look up the laws in Australia, selling a puppy that young is illegal in the US.
If you only have the one puppy you need to find some other puppies of a similar age for your puppy to interact with. You should also talk to your vet as a one month old puppy would normally still be getting some nutrition from their mother so you may need to give the puppy a milk replacement product in addition to mushy kibble. You are going to need to be extra proactive with socialization in a puppy taken from its mother at one month of age. Make sure it has positive interactions (even just looking at them counts) with different looking and different acting people and dogs as often as possible.
EDIT: This is also why your puppy may seem like a crazy biter. Puppies normally start to learn to moderate their biting from their mother and siblings but your puppy may not have been with their litter and mother long enough to learn that skill.
Seriously. I'm not trolling.
And put some force into it.
It has stopped all my dogs (when they were puppies) from biting me. They get angry because when they play with their siblings it's all about retaliation, but then you have to enforce how much bigger than them that you are.
What? Grab the puppy, hold it down, and bite it? Hard? No. No no no.
What I did with my Jack Russel terriers was, while playing with them, let them nibble on my fingers, and when they bite too hard, give an exaggerated yelp or "ouch" and pull away from the dog. It's important to sound wounded rather than angry and scolding. Most dogs will be able to understand what they did and learn to play more gently with enough reinforcement.
This is what they taught when I was taking my dog to obedience classes last summer.
or just replace your hand witha proper chew toy