Licking

[MikeS]

I have two one year old goldendoodles, Toby and Tucker. They are pretty good when greeting people. Tucker howvever will lick peoples hands for a greeting. Is there a way to change this habit? Mike

[Adina P]

Our Thule is a licking monster. If she sees skin she thinks it is a lollipop for her licking enjoyment. It is exceedingly annoying. She is NOT 1/4 as bad with us as she is with guests.

Do people just kind of offer their hand for continued licking? Or do they yank their hands away? What is their reaction? Does it seem submissive or more attention seeking?

I think there are some options:

1) Work HARD at teaching her to greet in a certain way via positive reinforcement--you'll need to practice with and without people and recruit friends to help: rewarding no-tongue contact or teaching her to greet people with a toy in her mouth. They could even treat licking as though it were a bite and yelp and turn their backs to her and ignore her. ANYTHING to remove the pleasure of their company and connect it precisely to the licking moment.

2) You MIGHT be able to put licking on cue and 'no lick' on cue...but I don't have the patience for that along with stimulus control so that she doesn't 'offer' it randomly.

3) Recruit friends to help you correct him. You can spray everyone's hands with bitter apple before you bring your lickerdoodle out...or have them do it outside the front door before coming in. That might help. Other corrections will have to be COMPLETELY calm. Since licking is a submissive behavior to an extent...they can't be MAD at him because that will make him act submissive some more and want to lick more and it becomes an unfair cycle he's trapped in.

But, acting completely non-chalantly, they could bump her nose with the hand she's licking and say "no" or "eh!" and then when she stops, pet her and give her attention. The correction needs to be strong enough without being overwhelming. They could give her a collar correction INTO the skin that is being licked. Pulling her away will make her want to get closer again...but a stiff correction into the skin she's licking will make her want to back away. Again they need to be willing and able to do this well or else they'll just confuse her.

You can combine the above I suppose...but he needs to know CLEARLY that licking has unpleasant consequences and loss of attention and that keeping her tongue to herself yields pets and attention and treats even!

We are working on this ourselves and I'm doing better about consistently correcting Thule (without anger or personal emotion involved as I'm not MAD at her...just want her to have an unpleasant consequence) and giving her attention and pets and praise when she is keeping her tongue to herself while she is near. Next step is to recruit friends to help because THEY have to be willing to correct or stop complaining ;-)

[MikeS]

Adina, thanks so much for taking the time to offer these suggestions. I never thought of the licking as a submissive behavior I have pulled her away when this happens and your right that this only makes her dive back in. I'll try these actions out. By the way, I simply can't get mad at these two dogs. they only do what feels right to them. Mike

[HANNAH 8/2/07 & HONEY 7/2/08]

Hi Mike, just a suggestion, you might want to try a Wait command, if your dog goes to lick again, make them sit and wait, also have your friends or whomever trun away from the dog when they go to do this, eventually they should get the idea not to lick and they can greet with getting a pat on the head.

[MikeS]

I like this a lot. It's simple and they do understand a "wait" command. I just never thought of applying it to this behavior. Thanks a lot....

[Janie]

Adina covered it...good luck.

[Lorraine Bromley]

I have one who likes to lick toes. I like my toes licked so I never corrected him other than the odd nibble. He seems to like to smell peoples feet and shoes. When we brought him home first he took our shoes and mostly my slippers and took them to our older 15 yr old dogs bed for her to smell lick too.

[Nina, Phil, Harlow & Lacey]

Harlow is a licker too. Which I don't mind, but DD does. Harlow is learning 'wait' so now DD has a reason to help teach.