Aggressive Puppy Biting

[Erin & Maizey]

Hi Everyone,

I know this topic has been covered ad nauseum here and I have read as many posts as I could find on it, but I was writing to see if there were any other suggestions.  After a little bit of puppy bliss, Maizey is now 11.5 weeks and will not stop attacking me as if I was a giant chew toy.  I have tried:

• yelping
• growling (this worked for a little while, now nada)
• clamping mouth shut
• saying no bite
• i tried that stick fist in her mouth thing but she bit me hard
• replacing with other toy (she gets distracted for about a minute)
• trying to do a training session working on sit/down/etc. (she willl start biting when we stop)
• time outs (worked for a little while, now she's started chewing the molding in bathroom where I put her)
• doing that thing where you kind of pop them over and hold the scruff of their neck
• letting her mouth my arm until it hurts then saying no but then she starts to clamp even harder
• turning my back (this is the worst bc then she attacks my backside)
• leaving the room (I can't leave her unsupervised for too long and when I come back she resumes biting me)

She has ripped holes in several of my clothes and I'm covered in scrapes and cuts.  I'm at my wit's end and it really hurts.  She has a gazillion chew toys, both soft and hard and bully sticks and all sorts of other dog appropriate things.  Why does she insist on attacking me?  What am I doing wrong?  We go to puppy manners class once a week and she's a superstar there and behaves properly and follows commands really well and everything.  We practice what we learned at puppy class and she does great at home with it but as soon as we stop, she morphs into satan's spawn.  I'm just really frustrated and she's making me not to be around her!  I try to bend over to pick up a toy to toss it for her to chase and she tries to bite my head, hand, arm, shoulder, etc.  She's totally out of control at times and its hard to even grab her collar to take her to a time out because she starts writhing and snapping and biting and barking.  Why won't she listen to me?  I feel like I'm clearly doing something wrong.

Are there any other ideas out there?  Is there a way to fast forward to the part where she's a normal sweet fun playful dog?  Any ideas on how long this phase lasts?  It is a phase, right?!?! Is this normal puppy behavior?  Everything I've read suggests that one of these methods eventually works... All the methods work for a little while but then she just ignores it.  There's an end in sight right?  Please?  I'm so scraped up.  :(   

Any advice would be much appreciated.  I'm just trying to teach her the right stuff and help her become a happy dog but this biting thing has got to stop (plus she's already 17.5 lbs so I'm worried that when she gets bigger it will just be a disaster). 

Thank you in advance!!!

[Amy & Cosmo]

My Cosmo is the same. Walks are awesome. I just thought the other day how great he was sitting beside me waiting for my daughter to get out of school. Kids walking by, buses speaking...and he sat just as perfect as could be. Fast forward to at home with him leached on my behind! He has gotten much better over the month we have had him. He is 12 weeks now.

[Erin & Maizey]

Maizey is 14.5 weeks and the biting got much better for a while and it was right after I posted this.  It was like she had read my post. :)  Now this week she has re-discovered biting and nipping.  It's been a stressful week (with having to say goodbye to my cat) and I think that's probably part of it.  I've also started wearing shorts because the weather warmed up and she has discovered the fun of attacking kneecaps and ankles.... owie.  One thing that did help was having play dates with other dogs, particularly older dogs who wont' put up with the nipping.  My friend's dog does this gentle nuzzle mouth around the neck thing that's pretty effective (albeit scary at first but then we realized she was just showing Maizey how to not bite hard)  Unfortunately I don't have a snout to do that. 

She's just like Cosmo and Coco - generally behaves really well on walks, sits to greet strangers, doesn't pull (too much) but then we get home and its attack puppy again.  My arms and hands are all beat up (again) and my legs are getting that way.   I'm pretty sure me being emotional about the cat isn't really helping things and its forcing her to do a lot to direct my attention to her.  What I really need for her is for her to be calm and snuggly, instead of hyper and squirmy.  Alas, all in due time.     

[Jenna & Cider]

@ Lindsey & Cocoa  ....something you said really struck me. I am having a very hard time bonding with my pup Cider. It will be 4 weeks, this weekend that I've had him and he is not very cuddly at all. He was pretty relaxed and shy when I first brought him home (would love his belly rubbed by me and my family who came to meet him) but now when I try to pet him all he wants to do is bite/gnaw on my hands. He will sometimes come and lay down on the floor next to me but the minute I try to pet him he either tries to chew on my hands or he moves to another place in the room.

Does this ever change? Will he ever be the cuddly affectionate dog that I thought I always wanted? Did I do something to make him this way?  Right now, I don't feel very attached to him :( I'm a bad person eh?

[Lindsey & Cocoa]

Cocoa has all the sudden become my husbands dog and will lay and cuddle with him for hours. So it does seem she is becoming more affectionate.... Just not with me but that is ok since I am 37 weeks pregnant and here very shortly will have a baby on me 24/7. We have also started training classes and I noticed a huge difference this week.
Actually cocoa just hit 20 weeks last week and it felt like she matured over night. The biting has really slowed down with my husband and I but she is a little mouthy still with my daughter but that is more my daughters fault because she will get then dog to excited. Oh and the puppy teeth are all gone and with that a lot of the mouthing stopped.
I think some dogs are just big cuddlers and some not and that is just the way they are no fault of yours.
Before cocoa i had a yorkie who had to be on me or with me 24/7 so this was a huge change.

[Joanne]

Jenna- I am feeling the same way about Baylee. It's taking me a while to warm up to her because of the biting. Since it's my kids she targets, I get very frustrated with her. I want her to be cuddly with me and fun for my kids to play with and instead she constantly bites at them and rips their clothes. She is getting slightly better with my 6 year old because she does "training" (sit, down, stay, come, etc.) with her with treats but given the opportunity, Baylee will be nipping and growling at her. Soooo frustrating...

And she has recently become slightly more cuddly, BUT she wants to get up on the couch to snuggle and my husband has put the big "no, no" on dogs on the couch, so it's constantly "Baylee, down!"

 

I'm hopeful that this is all stuff they will outgrow and I will be as attached to her as I have all my other pets I've had.

[John and Finn]

Finn is the same way.  I work out in the basement and he will lay down and chew on my iron weights.  I have noticed that Finn has gotten worse now that he teething.   Everyone tells me that they outgrow this so there is hope.

[Jennifer & Darwin]

I couldn't help but reply to this - especially when I saw "satan's spawn". I call my furry guy that on a regular basis. I, too, tried every method under the sun - all with limited success. I had two dog trainers (in class and private sessions) help me with this problem (which they never saw because he, too, was a superstar in training). Darwin is now 6 1/2 months old, weighs 50+ lbs and is an incredibly sweet dog except for this problem. Luckily (sort of...?) it is really only directed toward me (his primary caregiver). He is much better behaved with my kids and husband, so I have always felt that my kids are safe from his crazy mouth. He completely shredded my down coat, bloodied my hand (many times) and given me countless scratches and bruises. For the most part, it is improving with age. Although every time I think we have turned the page, he turns around and gets me. BUT it is definitely becoming less of a problem. At this point, I recognize the look in his eye and re-direct him with a command or a sharp ah-ah - this works 98% of the time. I am sure that 6 months sounds SO far away...but she will mature...eventually. Continue with the training - Darwin has had 12 weeks of training (not consecutive) and we work on his commands (and tricks) every day. Lots of chew toys, bully sticks, etc and LOTS of exercise and socialization (puppy socialization party every week until 5 months old, now dog park).

[Linda K Gregory]

It seems like she looks at you like part of her litter and not her leader.  My trainer suggests no playing on the floor with them and no tug of war.  This is what she did with her littermates when they were all to gather.  Does she get a chance to play with other dogs, like doggie day care or a dog park? When my pup gets "over excited" and wanting to nip, bite, chew on me, I shake my can with pennies in it and yell no.  If she keeps it up, then I firmly tell her no and tell her it is nap time and place her in her crate and she settles down and usually sleeps for a little bit. I would keep her in training mode all the time. The key is being consistent with what ever you do.  Good luck and please let us know how she does.

[Erin & Maizey]

I actually just posted the really long essay below (oops, I got a little carried away).  I definitely agree with you - and it's what my trainer said too.  As it turns out, I need just as much training as she does!!   She just finished all her shots so now we can have more doggie play time with strangers - daycare and the dog parks.  We've been limited to going to puppy kindergarten (once a week) and my friends who have dogs but I think the increased dog socialization can only help.  Thanks!! 

[Erin & Maizey]

Thanks again to all for the helpful replies!  This site is really so great. 

It's been a month since my original post, so I thought I'd post an update and pass along what I've learned. Maizey is now 17 weeks old (omg, when did that happen) and a little over 30 lbs.  We've made a lot of progress in the last month.  She graduated from puppy kindergarten and we have had a few personal in home training sessions, which REALLY helped me with understanding her aggressive temper tantrums (which, btw are only ever directed at me).  My trainer says that the barking/biting is a form of attention seeking so I have been working on re-directing her attention when she starts to act out.  Most of it involves taking away her favorite thing (me) or just conveying confidence and 'no this isn't the right way to play let's play with this instead).  Seems simple in idea, much harder to implement. 

My trainer also showed me that while I was definitely conveying the 'you're being frustrating, don't act this way' message I was not doing a good enough job conveying happiness when she's playing calmly and properly.  So now I praise A LOT and give her LOTS of treats when she's calm and playing appropriately.  Remarkably this has really worked.  She definitely slips up (normally its when I leave her alone for 5 mins to run upstairs and don't bring her with me or when we come back from a walk that she doesn't think was long enough) where she will corner me and start nipping and barking.  I just glare at her and put my hands on my hips and say "uh uh" - she makes this sad bark and then goes into the 'down position' - then i give her lots of praise and belly rubs and all is right with the world.  It's a matter of making it through the inital wave of nips though without freaking out or yelping which gets her excited and more riled up.  (needless to say, my pain tolerance has gone way up). :)  She sometimes gets mini time outs in my 1/2 bathroom when she goes way overboard and I can't calm her (usually when she has bitten too hard and I yelp in pain which causes her to get more excited).  When she stops barking she gets to come out. She quickly figured that out and so she stops right away. The next phase is to cut off the attention seeking behavior before it starts but I think she just needs to keep growing / lose those painful baby teeth. 

The training has been a lot of owner training in addition to the puppy training.  She's by no means all the way there, but I've learned a ton about how to communicate with a dog and I've been working on my own patience, which admittedly, needed some fine-tuning. :) 

It's definitely been a trying month with a few bad weeks - my loving, sweet, cuddly 8 year old cat had to be unexpectedly put down (all of which happened in a week) and Maizey was not yet ready to jump into the suddenly vacated role of lapcat.  But she's finally become cuddly and sweet and I really don't know what I'd do without her.  Everybody was right when they said to just hang in there.  She's been getting better every day and is turning into the awesome dog I was hoping for.  We even went to a 'bring your dog to the ballpark' game at the Nationals park and she was great!  She has actually started crawling in my bed at 6 am when she wakes up (we're working on the sleeping longer than 5-6 hours part) but then she just lies there peacefully for another hour and either chews on her toy or sleeps.  No chewing on me or my bedding!  I'm hoping in another few months or so she can stop sleeping in the crate at night and we can just use it for work days.  I am also considering buying stock in a bully stick company because I feel like I'm singlehandedly keeping them in business.

Finally, we are doing a trial run at a puppy daycare place for a few hours this weekend and I'm suddenly really nervous about leaving her with strangers but I think it will be good for her to have a playtime with new dogs / have an option for some days to tire her out.  A month ago, I would have jumped at the opportunity for just a few quiet hours in my house.  Now I'm kind of sad thinking about it and getting worried she will get beat up on by bigger dogs / learn bad habits.  This must be what it's like to send your kid off to school for the first time.

[Lori, Rooney & Zuzu]

Glad there has been so much improvement! Sounds like you have been working really hard to find solutions and help Maizey be the best she can be.

You may find the daycare actually improves her behavior. After Rooney spent 10 days with our terrific pet nanny (while we were on vacation) and had tons of both dog and people socialization with her, he came home so much more mature and calm. It was astounding! Maybe some extra socialization time is just what Maizey needs?

[Stephanie]

So happy to hear about the progress!! I brought home my puppy last weekend and he started with the nipping on day 3. After I read this discussion a few days ago I wanted to ask how you and Maizey have been doing. I was hoping it was getting better! Your post, all the replies, and this update are all really helpful for me! Hopefully I'll be able to nip this in the bud XD