Most of us that have owned puppies are used to playful biting and nipping. For a dog its mouth is an essential way of exploring the world, whether this is a new toy or our hands. While a puppy’s eyesight will normally develop when it’s around 2 weeks old, its sense of taste and touch is present from birth. A lot of a puppy’s initial interaction with its mother, its home and any brothers and sisters, will be done using its mouth.
Even once a puppy has developed its eyesight and hearing it continues to use its mouth to explore the world. Puppies will also use mouthing and nipping during play with their siblings, which is when they normally learn a very important lesson. This is often called bite inhibition, and basically means that they learn how hard it’s OK for them to bite their siblings.
In simple terms if a puppy bites another puppy too hard, the other puppy will yelp and will stop playing with it. As a pack animal the puppy will not want to be isolated from his siblings. Each puppy will learn the amount of force that they can use when biting playfully. This is of course a two way process – each puppy will also be nipped by their siblings and will respond either by continuing to play if the nip is acceptable, or by yelping and stopping play if the bite is too painful.
So the good news is that when your puppy nips you he is not being aggressive – it’s just a form of communication.
When we introduce a puppy into our home (and pack) then we need to teach it how to play with us without causing us pain. The main reason for this is that we’re not intended to be played with in this way. A level of biting or nipping that a puppy may find perfectly acceptable from another puppy may cause us some discomfort as our skin can be fairly susceptible to scratching. This is even more important if we have children in our house. It’s also important as our puppy will grow stronger, and what may just be annoying when he’s a puppy, could result in broken skin and be painful once he’s fully grown.
How do we teach our puppy to stop nipping and biting?
First I’d just point out that these techniques can also be applied to older dogs. Like many areas of dog training, these techniques will work more quickly with puppies. Dogs, like humans, seem to learn more easily when they’re younger.
You’ll first have to decide what level of mouthing you’re happy to accept. You’ll want to consider not only yourself, but others in your household when deciding this, especially if you have children. You should also consider the breed of your dog as different breeds have different jaw strengths. Some people don’t for instance mind some tooth contact, as long as no pressure is used – for others it’s preferable that no tooth contact is made.
Act Like A Puppy
The basis for training your puppy to control the level of nipping is to act like a puppy yourself. When you’re playing with your puppy and your puppy has either nipped you or is applying gentle pressure with his mouth towards the limit of what you feel is acceptable, yelp shrilly as if you’re in pain.
At the same time turn away from your puppy and move away from him. You’re best to get up and actually walk away a few paces to reinforce the point. Avoid any eye contact with your puppy at this time. The idea is to recreate the exclusion that other puppies will show their siblings in a similar situation.
Keep doing this for around 15-30 seconds so that the message gets through to your puppy that he has exceeded your limit for playful nipping. The time will vary, partly on your dog and partly on what other distractions are present. If you use this exclusion for too long, i.e. more than 30 seconds, your puppy will probably get distracted and start playing with something else.
Because dogs have a fairly short term connection between cause and effect it’s important that you use this exclusion technique at the time the dog nips you.
It’s also important if other people are in the room that they follow your lead. Make sure that they don’t give your puppy any attention or play with it. Ideally they should also turn away from your puppy to reinforce the exclusion.
For some potential problems you may face in trying to stop your puppy from biting check out part 2 of this article – stop puppy biting.
You might also want to have a look at Secrets to Dog Training. It’s full of detailed training that will help you to build a better relationship with your dog. Definitely worth a look if you need some extra help with your dog.