Those Puppy Teeth are Sharp!

Certainly not immediately, but not too long after JayDee joined us, we couldn’t help but notice that she did not understand the “not” part of “not biting the hand that feeds you”. I’d come to appreciate that this was typical puppy behavior and everyone who had ever had a puppy, who had met JayDee had a ready and vocal opinion about how to deal with this. I was of the opinion that this behavior would naturally fade as JayDee matured, but I also realized that there was a significant risk if mouthing, nipping, and biting was not dealt with at this early stage of puppy development.

During her second week with us I tried (1) my thumb on her tongue; (2) my finger down her throat; (3) my curling her lip around the sharp tip of a pointy tooth; (4) my cuffing her under the chin; (5) the palm of my hand “stop sign style” popping her on her nose; (6) my exclaiming “no bite”; and finally, this suggestion of a well-intentioned dog owner: (7) spraying Sweet Breath Spray into her mouth. Each of these had some temporary effect, but mouthing and taking fingers and hands into the mouth is typical puppy behavior and JayDee was being excessively typical.

Ian Dunbar in his book Before and After Getting Your Puppy, was very specific about developing and refining bite inhibition and accomplishing a “no dog teeth on human flesh” by four and a half months of age. As we were inviting families over, for the purpose of helping us socialize JayDee, I was aware that some of these families had younger children. Therefore, one of my concerns was that JayDee’s natural playful mouthing/biting could be frightening for these children and this in turn could escalate into a very negative situation.

At the end of week two, Pam came down for breakfast with several pages of printed material that she had downloaded from various websites. All of papers contained tips to solve the puppy mouthing and biting problem. Coincidentally, all of these techniques were non-aversive.

     jersey.net/~mountaindog/berner1/bitestop.htm

     clickertraining.com/node/168

     clickertraining.com/node/725

Unfortunately for JayDee all of the techniques I had tried were aversive. Fortunately, nothing I tried was harsh or abusive, but Pam’s selection of the printed materials was obviously more to her liking than what I was trying. I was grateful that Pam, although she was not in agreement with my approach, chose to send me a message in a non-aversive way! I certainly appreciated it!

At the same time I contacted Jenn Craig and she e‑mailed me a bunch of suggestions that both duplicated and expanded the recommendations that Pam had found.

What began to work for us was to “Yipe” or “Ouch” and then substituting a handy chew-toy. Standing and turning our back for a 30 second timeout was also quite effective, but the final result was not instantaneous, rather we saw a gradual improvement over time.

We also discovered that when JayDee was worn out, just like a human infant, she could become obnoxious, so at those times we “popped” her in the crate and she would fall asleep. The mouthing was also exaggerated when JayDee became excited. Having two teenagers in the house exacerbated the puppy-excitement syndrome. Daniel liked to use a growley voice and this would agitate the pup. He also found it great fun to tease JayDee with a towel; talk about bite promotion! Esther would enter the room and greet the pup with a high pitched voice – JayDee responded predictably. One of my concerns was to not allow JayDee to take a higher priority over and above the kids. On the other hand, these human behaviors were all counter-productive. Therefore, I waited until I had an opportunity to address these matters at a time when nothing else, particularly nothing else negative, was happening, and in a conversational manner suggested that perhaps the kids could modify their behavior so that JayDee would modify her behavior.

As JayDee matured, week by week, both the mouthing and the force of her biting did decrease. Still, as we approached 6 months of age, mouthing during excitation was still evident. We also found that if we got down on the floor, JayDee was more likely to be mouthy. Fortunately, all this behavior was playful. It was never aggressive. As JayDee continued to mature into adulthood, the mouthing, nipping, and biting faded out of existence. 
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