How to Stop Your Puppy from Biting You

October 13th, 2009 at 9:34am

If you have a new puppy in your home you must have already noticed his passion for chewing and biting everything he can get his little mouth close to. Obvious targets are your hands and feet, any shoes laying around, and basically everything else, too.I have listed a few good ideas for helping you deal with your puppy’s biting and chewing stage.

One of the first things to do is provide some chew toys to your puppy. Since your puppy is teething and definitely needs to bite something, these toys are great alternatives to your skin. As you start playing with your puppy and he gets too rough, stop him by placing your hand over his mouth to hold it shut. As soon as he starts to bite you, stop him by holding his mouth shut with your hand. Your puppy won’t exactly enjoy his mouth being held shut, so soothe him with your voice while you hold him. Without raising your voice firmly tell him “no biting”. You want to use the calm but firm voice so he doesn’t become nervous and continue resisting longer. The sooner he relaxes, the sooner he will submit. 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 alternative.Be patient with the training (it won’t change overnight. 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. If you let the puppy have a free run of the house, he will very likely find something tasty to put in his mouth-your slippers, furniture-pretty much anything he finds. 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 instance, it is a simple and easy idea to keep all your shoes behind a closed door.

The Mama dog uses a vocal trick to let the puppy know it is playing too rough. Yelping out in a very high pitched voice when he bites you, lets him know he is hurting you. You might feel sort of silly, but this is one way Mama Dog gets a puppy’s attention and stops the puppy from biting her.

A more vigorous demonstration that you want him to stop biting is to hold his mouth shut with your hand and at the same time stare him in the eyes and give him a growl or snarl. This is one of the ways Mama dogs send a very clear message to the pup.

You probably won’t want to grab the puppy by the scruff of the neck with your teeth the way a Mama dog does, but there is no reason not to use your hand to hold him still and show him who is boss until he submits. 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 wrestling and tug of war only encourage him to bite, so avoid the rough play. I, for one, was always guilty of playing rough with my young puppies, and I had the scarred and scabbed hands and forearms to show for it. Before I learned better, I used to enjoy the rough play as much as my puppies did, and didn’t know it potentially could lead to behavior problems with aggression.

Try out these tips to stop your puppy from biting you and your household. For more great tips and advice on how to train your puppy or doggy please visit www.BehaveDoggy.com.

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