FAQ - Biting?

There are some questions that come up with a much greater frequency than others. One of those questions is, "My puppy keeps biting me. How can I stop her?" The puppies vary by breed, but the questions always have two things in common:

1) The puppy is biting peoples' hands, feet, clothing, socks, etc.
2) The puppy is most commonly 8 to 15 weeks or 5 and 6 months old.


Older Puppies Biting

I'm going to address the second age group first, because it's a lot easier and requires less explanation. Just like human babies, puppies go through a teething stage. Most dogs go through this stage around five or six months of age. Because teething is painful for a puppy, they often relieve this pain by gnawing on things. Some things they gnaw on are perfectly appropriate, such as dog toys, while others are not, such as your hands or favorite pair of sneakers.

The good news is that teething is a stage that will pass - and it's easy to help your puppy get through this without eating your furniture if you provide him with things to gnaw on. Pet stores now pretty commonly sell a variety of teething toys. In my opinion, the best toy for teething is a toy like the Cool Teether, which is made from a soft plush cloth. The great thing about a teething toy like this is that it is designed to be frozen before giving it to puppy. This helps relieve the pain of teething by cooling and soothing the gums!

If you don't want to purchase special teething toys, any rugged canvas dog toy will work for this purpose and can also be frozen. You can also offer your puppy a frozen terrycloth towel to gnaw on during his teething period.

Needless to say, while your puppy is teething, please supervise your puppy around your belongings so that he does not take out his teething pain on your couch or sneakers. Always have an appropriate toy within reach and always encourage the puppy to spend time gnawing on that. If the puppy does get a hold of your shoes, don't scold him or yell at him - he's doing this because his gums hurt, not because it's fun. Offer an appropriate toy instead.


Young Puppies Biting

With the older age group out of the way, I now want to address young puppies biting and how to deal with that.

Over on Yahoo Answers, the young puppies that people write about are usually in the seven to ten week age group, which is very, very young for puppies to be away from their litter mates and mother. It's very unfortunate, in my opinion, that people would actually sell or give away a puppy at seven weeks, and even though the law allows for them to be sold by eight weeks old (nine in some areas), it is not always the best idea. I'll explain why.

Young puppies learn a lot of their social skills early on in life, through interacting with their litter mates and their mother. Much of this learning takes place around the time they are weaned (usually around five to six weeks old) and are able to walk around, and try to get out of the whelping box to explore that big, big world out there. There are now many breeders who acknowledge how important this period is for puppies, and many will not sell their pups until 12 weeks of age, sometimes even older.

Puppies have to learn that biting people and other animals is not a proper thing to do. The easiest way to teach this is to do the following:

When your puppy bites you, regardless of how hard, give a loud, high-pitched yelping sound. This is designed to communicate your pain and also to startle the puppy. Startled puppies tend to let go immediately, which is what you want. Once your puppy has let go of you after you've yelped, you want to look away from the puppy, and, without saying anything, get up and turn away, completely ignoring your puppy.

What your puppy learns from this is that putting teeth on you immediately stops all play and you become very, very boring. This works because dogs are pack animals, and they enjoy play and crave attention. Stopping all interaction and ignoring them is, to a puppy, a very harsh punishment, and it causes them to learn quite quickly that if they would like to enjoy your attention and play with you, they must not bite.

This method also works (for the same reasons) with a lot of other unwanted behaviors, such as a dog that jumps up on people. Jumping gets the dog attention, therefore the dog jumps. When jumping gets the dog nothing but people turning away and ignoring her, the jumping stops. When the method is used for other behavior problems, it's done without the yelping, of course.

I also want to add a brief note about negative reinforcement, because a lot of people make the mistake of inadvertently reinforcing certain behaviors that they are attempting to correct. Jumping dogs are a good example, but it works the same when talking about other behaviors, including biting puppies.

When a dog jumps on a person, most peoples' natural reaction is to push the dog away and tell them "No!" or "No Jump!" To a human, this is obvious - telling the dog no or pushing the dog away communicates that this is a behavior you don't want. To a dog, however, this isn't quite as clear. Dogs jump for attention - so even if the dog gets negative attention such as being told No or being pushed away, he is still getting attention. You're talking to him and you're making physical contact, both of which are actually reinforcing his jumping behavior.

In some dogs, you can even escalate the behavior with negative reinforcement. Take, for example, a dog that is used to pretty rough play. When this dog jumps on you and you're pushing him off, he may see this as a fun new game, or even a challenge - so he now jumps harder, higher, more consistently. Why? Because every time he jumps, you "play back".