Leash Biting!

[Sam, Risa and Archie]

Has anyone experienced this? Archie is 1 and he is a stubborn butt and so smart...no matter which route I take to walk back to the house he knows I'm headed home and his gets stubborn so he bits onto the leash and pulls on it and wants to play as we are walking. He also does it when theres another dog and I don't let him immediately go up to the dog or even if the dog is dragged away by their owner....Archie gets stubborn and bratty and starts to bite the leash.

I have tried everything! Is this simply just a puppy behavior that will eventually fade or do I need to do something training wise to get him to stop biting onto the leash as we walk?

[Sam, Risa and Archie]

yeah he's bad with me because i'm the guy he usually wrestles and plays with the most in the house, so he always tries these things on me...anyone else never. 

[Deb's Yarrow and Schatzi]

Different strokes for different doodles.  :)  Yarrow is my most challenging dog ever and we have no puppy classes in this little town.  I'd be following my instructor's advice, if I had one.  I started out trying to be alpha (I am not an alpha type)  and it wasn't working for me.  So I've been trying the techniques of different 'experts' and finding my way with this puppy of mine.   I adore Cesar Milan and Zach George, they have different approaches and I see the value in both.  Yarrow seems to respond better to the constant positive reinforcement.  The recent spay recovery has set us back two giant steps in training. 

I wish there was a puppy class here.

[Oliver & Elizabeth]

You should check out Ian Dunbar, he's a very respected dog behaviorist who believes in a positive and friendly approach to dog training (positive reinforcement and negative punishment). Nothing harsh like Cesar Milan, I feel like his training methods are just too intense and make training a miserable (and painful) experience. Ian Dunbar makes training fun--your dog is seriously happy the whole time.

On his website he offers all of his books as PDFs for free (he truly loves dogs); his website is Dog Star Daily.

[Deb's Yarrow and Schatzi]

Thanks for the link.  I'm always interested in new ideas and what's working for others.  I'll enjoy checking this guy out.  I've not heard of him before.  Also, I've recently discovered Cesar's new program called Leader of the Pack.  Again he's dealing with dogs who need rehabilitating but he seems to be showing a more sensitive side.  Looks to me as though he's mellowed.

[Stephanie and Ragley]

That sounds to me like a great way to hurt her and rip her teeth out, but maybe that is just me. Like Deb said, different strokes for different doodles. I'm choosing positive reinforcement over positive punishment with Ragley, but I can understand that different methods may work better for others.

[Sam, Risa and Archie]

I like positive reinforcement too.  I am just not mean enough to use punishment lol 

[Stephanie and Ragley]

The term "punishment" refers to anything that will cause the behavior to decrease in frequency. The term "reinforcement" refers to anything that causes a behavior to increase in frequency. "Positive" refers to implementing a stimulus, whereas "negative" refers to removing a stimulus. When I use the term "positive reinforcement" it refers to something such as giving Ragley a treat in order to increase the frequency at which she lies down when I give her the hand signal. The term "positive punishment" refers to a situation such as someone hitting the snout of a puppy when he or she nips in order to decrease the frequency at which the puppy nips. 

[Stephanie and Ragley]

I am well aware of that. I never said not giving treats was removing a stimulus. I also never said it was fine to hit a dog. When did I say either of those things? I was merely providing an example (hence the "such as") to help illustrate the meaning of each of the terms I had used in my previous post. Praise, treats, attention, toys, and hitting, among many other things are all stimuli.

[Oliver & Elizabeth]

We do lots of training classes with Oliver, in one of his classes the trainer believed in occasional positive punishment and would jerk the leash to get the dogs to stay close. Naturally, this wasn't our method of choice (Oliver gets treats when he stays close and none when he doesn't). When the trainer demonstrated this technique using Oliver he immediately reacted by staying really close; you could tell he was scared of being jerked and hurt. The trainer exclaimed "your dog isn't used to being jerked is he?" Of course he wasn't, and while his behavior was excellent, I knew that he was staying close not because he was happy to but rather to avoid being hurt.

[Kelly & Zoe]

Yep - go a certain way that Zoe doesn't want and if she's cranky enough, she starts this.  We have a couple of methods to get her to keep moving and stop biting on the leash:

'find it' - throw a piece of kibble (or whatever treat you carry with you) on the ground in front of him and say Archie, 'find it' - rinse and repeat until he forgets about leash biting and happily follows the kibble.

find and/or carry a stick to give to him  - this almost always works for us- she loves to carry a stick in her mouth - we can usually get at least a block out of this.

stop and do sit/stand/stay commands - it sometimes gets their mind off of whatever naughty behavior.

Sometimes, Zoe is just plain thirsty when she does this so I always bring water and offer it to her.  Most of the time this does the trick as well.  Or, we've walked longer than her threshold and she's simply tired.

You can also try laying/dropping the leash to the ground (still holding it), and put your foot on the leash directly under his neck so that he cannot stand, only sit (and cannot bite the leash) - we do this when she's super excited around dogs/people - keeps her from jumping too.

As far as training - I haven't found any training methods (that I'd want to employ) to curb this behavior.  The tricks we use work most of the time.  I'm assuming she'll grow out of it (she's 9 months now).  She certainly has been better about it in the last month or so -

Good luck!

[Deb's Yarrow and Schatzi]

"Find it" sounds like something that would work with Yarrow.  I like Zak George's "Look at me" command.  My son had an attention span challenge, and that's what  I always had to say to get his attention to communicate with him.  LOL. (He's a brilliant grown up now)

I feel like I'm back to square one with all this.  We were making headway until the confinement after spay surgery.  Having to make all efforts to keep her from running and jumping for 7 - 10 days has been quite a setback.  We're on day 8 now and I'm hoping to let her cut loose real soon.  She just wants to run and wrestle so right now she must look to my neighbors like I haven't been training her at all.

[Kelly & Zoe]

Not that I'm recommending it - but after Zoe was spayed, I started walking her on day 4 - her incision was fine and it was *impossible* to keep her calm. Walks were the only way to expend some energy.

Look at me is good  - I'm going to start training that one!