Help. I click and treat...and risk losing my fingers!

[Jamie Petro]

Wrigley is 11 weeks old now, and I am amazed at how well she is doing with her training. She is picking it up so fast, she's like a sponge. Just this week though she's started biting and I mean BITING my fingers/hands when I offer the treat. I read some other discussions about biting/nipping where it said to close your fist and make the dog lick before you offer the treat. Should I do that, or would that make too much time pass after the click?

[Adina P]

Like Jane said work on gentle treat taking, but do it separately from clicker training. And be ready for some mouthing...until she figures it out =)

In the meantime start tossing treats on the ground--they don't have to come from your hand and in many instances it's BETTER to toss the treat. For instance when you teach 'sit' or 'down' if you didn't toss the treat then the dog would STILL be sitting and then how do you get them to demonstrate they really understand its sitting you're after if they are STILL sitting? The way you do this is by tossing the treat.

So pup sits, you click, you toss the treat on the floor.
Pup gets up, finds treat, sniffs around, realizes it must repeat the behavior, offers sit, you click, toss treat...and so on.

I actually prefer to toss the treat on the floor because it does for the dog to really prove he gets it by having to return to do the behavior again.

[Jamie Petro]

Thanks for the advice!