Leash Inside - mouthiness - kids

[Kristen]

Hi,

We just got our boy a couple of weeks ago and we love him so much. It's been many years since I've had a pup. I read that it is best not to give them free reign of the house and that certainly works best for us as we have 6 children and because he's so mouthy I need to keep him and the babies separated. Since our house is basically one big open room that means I have to keep him on a leash inside all the time. I try to move him around so he doesn't get bored and so he feels like he's a part of what we're doing. I just want to get some opinions from other doodle owners and especially those with young children. If I let him off leash inside he chews the kids. He is very difficult to play with because he is so mouthy...even for me. He is very VERY easily riled and for some reason gets most worked up over my 11 year old boy. I think part of the problem is that he was 10 days shy of being 8 weeks old when we brought him home. I WISH I had found this forum before we got him :( I would never have brought him home that early. Hindsight is 20/20 I guess. 

Also, I've tried the Kong with him and he just doesn't like it. He also is not motivated during our training sessions by his own kibble. He ONLY likes freeze dried liver. He doesn't like peanut butter and he doesn't like cheese? I would love to find a "treat" that is less expensive but still good for him and would love even more if he was motivated by his kibble. Any suggestions? 

Sorry...I'm all over the place with this. SO many questions and I thought I read up plenty before bringing him home. haha!

[Haley, Yeti, and Phin]

Our little Yeti did not like PB when he was a puppy either (at 10 months that's a completely different story). We gave Yeti chunks of boiled chicken as treats and he loves them to this day. He had some digestive issues when he was younger so we gave him a lot of sweet potatoes instead of kibble. He loved them so much. After he was feeling better and back on kibble I would over mash some sweet potatoes, put them into a ziplock bag and pipe them into little bite size pieces onto a baking sheet and freeze them as treats! Boy oh boy does he love that. Sometimes i'll cut up a piece of apple (very small pieces and skin off) and give them to him as treats. He also enjoys cooked green beans and carrots. Every so often when we have steak and I don't eat it all i will cut up tiny pieces of that for him. You could also try boiled ground beef!

[Kat and Winston]

The mouthing is hard, but we are promised by owners of older doodles that it will pass. We are still in the midst of it at 4 months old. Our children find they can pet our pup when he's nicely settled chewing on a bone or toy.  Usually this will be an hour or so after eating. Right before and right after eating he is usually the most worked up and will attempt to chew on your hands or clothing. When he does this we redirect with a toy or bone and if that doesn't work he gets a short time out in his crate. Then he gets a second chance once he's calmed down.

We have our puppy on a leash at all times he is out of his crate, other than when he's eating, but we also often put him in his crate for napping or when he gets worked up and needs to calm himself down. We have two crates, one in our bedroom and one in a main living area. He's always in the crate if I or one of my teens can not give him 100% eyes on attention. I won't leave my 8 year old alone with him even for a minute as a  puppy and young child should never be left alone in my opinion.

Early on we had problems getting him to stay in the crate without whining if we left the room. His eyes would pop open the second the last person left, but thankfully our perseverance paid off and that's passed now and he even will wander into the crate for a nap all on his own and stay there with the door open. A puppy needs a lot of sleep and in a busy household he needs a safe place to get that.

At four months a typical day for our dog will be him waking around 6, being fed around 6:30 and then being out of the crate until 8. Then he usually is back in and sleeps until 10 or 11. Then he's back out until an hour after his midday meal. In the afternoon he tends to be more in and out of it depending on our schedule(we homeschool so it varies) and his behavior. He's always in it for our dinner hour and then he's usually taken out to have his dinner and usually remains out until his bedtime at 10:30, but he's often sleeping on the floor near one of us for a good portion of this time. My husband takes him out at 10:30 for his last potty of the day and he now usually sleeps though until 5:45-6:00(sometimes I still get a 5:00 wake up call)

I will say that in my limited experience an overtired puppy seems to get more worked up and mouth even more so be sure he is getting lots of sleep.

[Haley, Yeti, and Phin]

Randomly yeti would get so worked up for no reason we could think of. We started a puppy class and they told me it sounded like he was over tired. Like a child, they get fussy when they are tired. It made so much sense. We hardly ever "gave him a nap." He is the type that won't sleep unless we put him in his kennel. He is far to intrigued with ANYTHING going on. We started putting him in his kennel for naps and it helped so much. He is 10 months old and still grabs our hands when he wants to play. We have tried everything from yelping in pain, turning our backs to him, saying no, replacing with a toy, to putting him in his kennel for a time out. I think when he bites our hands it's s cry for attention. He really wants us to play but sometimes we're just too tired. If we're up for it I'll take him outside and run around with him like crazy. This helps A LOT. But on days like today where the temp never reached above 0, outside play wasn't an option so we just put him in his kennel for a time out which helped a lot too. Here's to hoping it stops eventually :)

[Missy]

he is so cute!! Congrats on the baby!! 

I am not a professional, but things I learned along the way.  When our pup was nippy, we did the high pitch yelp if he nipped us and always replaced our hand with a toy. 

My breeder said that litter mates help each other out with learning the strength of their mouths. And the littler mates yelp, when sibling bites too hard.  So, since you got your pup early, maybe he is still learning the strength of his jaws.   

plus, you want to make sure he respects your body parts!!  (i know those teeth are razors!) 

We have open living spaces.  We got a folding gate like this one: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003SOX02U/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF...

And when we needed a time out, we put the puppy in there with some toys.  He learned to entertain himself but still be apart of the action. 

I also, as I knew my schedule would have me 'out of the house for hours' in the future, trained the pup to go upstairs to his crate for nap time.  I was always working him to being left in his crate for up to 5 hours (this was a gradual increase in time over 8 months to a year)

Just make sure you set the schedule, not the pup. 

Think about your life and what you want that schedule to look like, and work your way to that goal. 

We followed the 'nothing for free' mentality.  Which helps reinforce all the training modules along the day. 

And our pup was over 1.5 years old before giving free reign on the entire house. Initially, the pup only had access to his crate, the play pen like pictured on Amazon, or the floor space with my supervision. 

I am at a loss about the kibble.  Ours took to kibble out of our hands as a treat. I also buy those steak tenders and use those as our potty treats. Maybe you could try a different flavor of kibble (that is cheaper than FD liver) and use it as treats.

 

I am a big believer in a hierarchy of treats. We have treats we only give when it is crate time.  For us, we only gave milk bones in the Kong during create time. At evening time, dog was given elk antler to chew, then it was taken away until the next night. 

these pups are very smart.  I think if you lead the way with a schedule and plan, and stay consistent, the pup will fall right into the routine. 

the puppy phase will end eventually.  and I am sure will be best friends with the kiddos.  Initially, you have to set up guidelines and rules for even the pup to follow for great bonding to occur. 

hang in there!! 

[Judi Christopher]

I had the same problem with both my mini golden doodle's mouthiness.  What seemed to work well for me was to gently grab the mouth, hold it shut and say "no bite".  Didn't take long at all before they got the idea and now they lick!  Better than the full on mouth around my wrists!

[Judi Christopher]

Also!  Kong didn't work for me at all, but the Bully stick!! oh yeah.  Keeps them busy for hours.

[Kristin]

I can relate to what you are going through now - be assured that with perseverance and time, it will get better!  We got Maisy at 7 weeks of age from a local breeder with a great reputation.  In hindsight, I wish our breeder kept her pups until at least 8 weeks, preferably 10.  We too struggled with mouthing and bite inhibition, and I'm sure it would have been easier if we got her at a slightly older age.  

It looks like you already have received some helpful advice about this.  One thing I would suggest is hand feeding your puppy from time to time.  We still do this with Maisy once a day, and it has helped her learn to accept a treat with her tongue/lips only.  It also has helped us to yelp and withdraw attention from Maisy whenever her teeth touch our skin.  If she is particularly wound up we will gently put her in her crate to calm down for 5-10 minutes.  At 5 months of age, she now has most of her adult teeth, and she rarely mouths us.  If you can fit an obedience class into your schedule and budget, I'd highly recommend that too!  We started Maisy in puppy class when we first got her and it was so helpful with socializing her and getting immediate feedback from the trainer to help with problem behaviors.  Now if we can only get her jumping under control ;)

[Kathy Basso]

I am going through this as well with 13 week old Gemma, but it is improving each day. I agree that over tiredness makes this worse, so most of her vigorous exercise is earlier in the day. I joined a drop off puppy socialization group, where she plays with all dogs and pups in a supervised setting. She loves it and I think the big boys are teaching her some manners. I found that now that she has learned bite inhibition, I can start the 'no bite' command which seems to be working. The key is not to do any of this new learning when she is too worked up. When that happens, a firm sit and a treat for sitting works most of the time. It's a learning process for all of us, and exhausting!