BITING AND MOUTHING

[Lynne Fowler-Oodles of Doodles]

Biting and mouthing can lead to some serious consequences. 

What are some ways to stop this?

What works? What does not?

[Karen, Jasper and Jackdoodle]

First, a lot of people deliberately put their hands in a puppy's mouth and initiate "biting" games, which of course should never be done. As soon as a puppy puts his open mouth on someone's hand (or any other part), they need to say "No!" (some people say Ouch!) very sharply and then substitute something that is acceptable for the puppy to chew...a toy, bone, etc. When the pup takes it, he should be praised to the moon.
When playing, and the puppy gets excited and starts jumping & nipping at hands, clothing, etc., again there needs to be a sharp verbal correction, and the game stops.
Teething can cause pups to bite or nip, too. Provide cold objects and plenty of things to chew on to help ease the pressure in his gums. I like frozen, knotted washcloths for teething pups.

[Chris & Boys]

When Fozzy wanted to play, he would mouth the boys.....grabbing their arms with his mouth to get their attention. What worked for us is, at that point they would stop, turn away, while saying Uh-uh and then go right into training commands or tricks, with and without treats. Fozzy started this after his teething, at about 6 months, at the beginning of his teen stage.

[Shelly Gouvas]

Thats what Jake does with Tommy{my six year old].And he yells at Jake and gets mad because well it probably hurts him.I have to train Tommy to react diffrenty and that seems to be the problem.Tommy is just not into training at all.

[Kevin Lackey]

I like the washcloth idea. Jacquie told me about that one and I forgot all about it.

[Sharee & "Hope" Peterson]

Kevin-what is the 'washcloth' idea?  My 3mo old Golden Doodle, Hope is a maniac when it come to biting; and, I have found NOTHING that will work against it!

[Sharee & "Hope" Peterson]

any help will be apreciated . . .

[Karen, Jasper and Jackdoodle]

Many puppies bite from the pain of teething. They need something to chew on and ease the teething pain. The "washcloth idea" is as follows:

Soak a washcloth in water, wring it out thoroughly, tie a big knot in it, and freeze it. Then give it to the puppy to chew on.

 

[Marietta]

What we did to stop our doodle from biting was whenever she bit one of us we held her mouth closed for like 3 seconds and evenually she learned not to bite.

[Richard Crowe]

One way to stop, or at least reduce, unwanted behavior is to place a couple of pennies in a soft drink can and shake it any time the dog displays an unwanted behavior.

This will of course, work better on some dogs than on others.

Stopping the behavior before it takes root is the absolute best method. While a seven week old puppy may be funny when the pup nips, it is not at all funny with a dog of 60 to over a hundred pounds.

With puppies a strong "NO!" command or "NO BITE!" along with a soft tap on the nose will usually prevent or reduce recurrence of behaviors.

[Sandra]

I close Ozzie's mouth and give him kisses. I don't know if this helped but he seemed to stop mouthing after he turned one.

[Kyoko]

Charlie's trainer gave us the following instruction and I tried it starting yesterday!

Everyone in a family will wear a wistle on their wrist. ( It have to be visible for the dog )
Each time when the dog mouth you, just blow the wistle softly without saying anything, and quickly leash the dog in semi isolated area( Time out). The leash have to be short enough that the dog can sit but can't lay down.( I chose door knob)
Once the dog is calm ( 2 ~ 3 minutes) unleash the dog without saying anything.

And you know what? Charlie hates it!! When I blew the wistle for the first time, she got miserable, after I unleashed her, she went under the piano bench, and followed me around afterwords. The second time, she just took herself to her own time out area. (Under the piano bench) She has not mouthed me or anyone in the family since then so far......amazing. I am going to ask the trainer if I can use this for her resource guarding as well or not.

[Leslie C.]

I'm trying to deal with this with Lili and I'm not sure which direction to go . . . tonight I just wanted to invision a muzzle on her as she would not let me type this . . . she is in her crate now . . .
I did solve the chomping down on the lead and pulling real hard behavior. I figured she would not be too interested in a metal chain so I picked up a horse lead (w/ a chain near the clasp and eventually rope).
I think with this positive training that I have been doing she is unaware of when she has done something wrong . . .
~Leslie