If your household has a new puppy, I am sure that you have been the victim of his sharp little teeth. Among the targets is the skin on your hands and feet, any loose shoes you haven’t put away, and well, I am sure you already know nothing is safe.Below are some common sense tips that will help you stop your puppy from biting you and your household, and making sure his chewing is not as much of an issue.
- First of all, get your puppy some chew toys to play with. He’s teething, so he’s going to have to bite something, and these chew toys are the perfect substitutes for your hands and feet. As the puppy’s playing gets too rough, use your hand to hold is little mouth closed. You should keep his mouth closed until he becomes submissive and accepts your hand over his mouth without struggling. He will probably not be happy about this, but keep him calm with your voice and hold him still. Using a firm but calm voice, tell your puppy “no biting”. Be sure to keep your voice calm so he doesn’t become nervous and resist even longer. The calmer he stays, the quicker he’ll become submissive. Once he has become submissive and stopped struggling, it is time to remove your hand from his mouth, and offer him his chew toy as a wonderful substitute to human flesh. Give him praise as soon as he starts to chew on the toy.Because you are positively reinforcing chewing on the toy instead of you-consistently-the puppy will learn that the toy is the better alterntive.Just be patient and consisitent with this training, and never punish or hit your puppy for playing too rough-that won’t help. If you use negative reinforcement you end up hurting your relationship with your puppy, and ultimately make training him harder.Make sure the entire household is on the same page, for the training to be effective. If some people are yelling or hitting the puppy when he play bites, this will undermine your own approach and cause the puppy to be confused.
- A good way to prevent household damage when you can’t supervise your puppy’s activities directly, is to keep him in his crate. By not either watching or confining your puppy to his crate, he most likely will be found chewing various items around the house. Make sure to put some chew toys inside his crate to serve his chewing enjoyment needs.
- Common sense alone tells you some easy ways to stop the pup from chewing easy to get at goodies. For example, try keeping your shoes and slippers, etc. in a closed closet.
- Borrow a trick form Mama dog to let the puppy know he is biting too hard. The way to do this is by yelping in a high pitched voice when he bites you. Even if you feel funny doing this, it is a very effective communication to your puppy.
- I have that when he is really biting hard, that combining the hand over the mouth with a snarl and staring into his eyes. sends a strong enough message that he will stop. Mama dogs will do this in order to get the message across very vividly to their puppies.
- You might not want to get fur in your mouth like a Mama dog does to make your point, but you can certainly grab the scruff of his neck with your hand until he is submissive again to let him know that you are the boss. Don’t stop the correction until he has really shown you he understands that you are the boss, by becoming submissive.
- Playing rough games with him, such as tug of war or wrestling, is a bad idea (even though it is so much fun) because it just encourages him to bite even more. I always used to do both those rough games with my puppies, and consequently always used to have bloody hands and wrists and forearms. I didn’t realize at the time the rough playing was not a good idea because it could increase his aggression level.
Use these tips to get control of your puppy’s biting problem. Click here for more dog training tips www.BehaveDoggy.com.
To get the very best of the on-line dog training programs, please click here. Secrets to Dog Training.
