Puppy Play-Biting

"My young puppy keeps biting our hands - HELP!"

Young puppies are notorious at biting your hands - and those sharp puppy teeth can be very painful! But rest assured that this is a very normal thing - it doesn't mean that your pup is aggressive, just that she is young. If you watch a litter of puppies interacting with each other, you'll see them biting each other all the time. The problem is that they often mistake our hands and clothes and ankles as being just like their littermates.

How do we teach the pup not to do this to us? First, we'll start with some basic rules of how to interact with a young puppy:

Puppies LOVE to play - that's what they live for. What's the worst thing that could happen to them? Play ending. So that's how we will "punish" them for being too rough - by suddenly making play stop when they bite. The rule is "All fun and games end when puppy teeth touch human skin".

Pups bite because it is fun, it's their way of playing, and it gains them attention. So, to punish the puppy, all we have to do is make the fun end. If you're playing with your pup and his teeth touch you, yelp loudly and shrilly like a hurt puppy. (If this makes him MORE excited, or if you're a guy who can't really do this, BELLOW like he's really hurt you). Immediately disengage yourself from him, and as calmly as you can, leave the pup behind (in a safe, puppy-proof place). Give him the cold shoulder. You only have to leave him for a little bit (less than 5 minutes, probably).

Meanwhile, make sure that your pup is getting lots of praise and attention when he is playing well and gently. Pups sometimes learn to bite you to get attention, so make sure that they are getting rewarded with attention when they're being good, not when they're being bad.

If the biting is really bad, you might also want to spray your hands (or clothes he's going after) with Bitter Apple. If you haven't already used Bitter Apple, get some (now!) from the pet store. Unscrew the top and pour a little bit on a cotton ball or Kleenex, and casually walk up and pop this in the pup's mouth. The dog should spit it out (they usually make a face of disgust, too!). When he does, PRAISE him! "What a good boy, that IS disgusting, isn't it!" Now you can spray Bitter Apple on your hands or anything else you don't want him chewing on (furniture, houseplants, electrical cords, etc.).

I mentioned above to make sure that the puppy is getting enough exercise. I can't emphasize this enough - you'll be amazed by what a difference it makes. I recommend bringing your pup to an off-leash dog park, or any park where people bring friendly dogs for socialization. Let your puppy run and play and wrestle with other dogs. It will tire him out, and other dogs will be SURE to tell him when his needle-sharp puppy teeth are being used inappropriately!

Meanwhile, you can start teaching your pup to sit and lie down on command. As your pup gets good at responding to these cues, you can use them to calm him down when he starts forgetting himself and using his mouth too hard.

Please note that it's important that puppies learn that they can control the strength of their jaws and the way that they use them. You really do NOT want your pup to never bite you because then he will never learn how to bite softly. This is called "bite inhibition". In your pup's lifetime, he will probably be put in the position where he feels he needs to bite - this is the only way that dogs have to show that they are very upset. Your goal is to teach your pup that he can grasp with his jaws without breaking skin. (As a clumsy dog owner, I have been known to accidentally step on my own dogs' tails. Instinctively, they will usually put their jaws where the pain was - but since they have good bite inhibition, they merely grasp with their jaws instead of biting).

It's important that you notice and reward good behavior and appropriate play. Brenda Aloff, of Heaven on Arf, calls this Opportunity Training: When the opportunity to reward good behavior knocks, open the door and give your pup a reward!

A note about children: Young children and young puppies must always be supervised when they are together. The fast, unpredictable movements of children often excite puppies. When puppies accidentally hurt them (and they almost always will, eventually), children tend to scream in a way that excites puppies further, and often run away or wave their arms - causing the pup to want to bite them again. Teach young children to move slowly around dogs so that they don't over-stimulate them, and teach them to "freeze" when the pup starts to get too excited - before the pup starts to bite. When the kids and the pups are playing together, set up a situation where it will be easy to separate them quickly - maybe a door the child can slip through, or a baby gate you can pop the puppy over when he gets too rambunctious. A good idea is to make it a rule that there is always a toy between the child and the dog - that neither one sees the body of the other as a play object for direct manipulation.

Puppy biting is normal and most pups will grow out of it eventually, but take the time to teach them that humans do not put up with it.