My Wife and I have a 12 week old ESS pup bitch which we acquired at 7 weeks old from good working lines. As it was bought with gundog/housedog intentions we are concentrating on the 'house training' aspect to start with. We feel we have that sorted by Molly having a high % of nights as completely mess free nights but we have a great concern to her high degree of biting as soon as she gets in the slightest bit excited. Her biting never exceeds to breaking skin but hangs on to any form of clothing around the ankles and feet, hands and anything in her way. We really enjoy playing with her but it gets too much when she bites us only seconds into playing with her regardless of type of toy i.e tennis ball or rope toy, she prefers us than toy. My Wife is getting quite stressed as she is nearly 7 months pregnant and can't give the dog all the attention,as she needs some rest during the day but I come home at lunch to relieve her from the wrath of the mad mutt. We realise this biting/mouthing is only normal puppy behaviour but I know it's driving the missus mad and we are both concerned about the pup snapping at the little one when it's born and causing injury. Can anyone help?

Have a look at this thread [link http://www.champdogs.co.uk/cgi-bin/board/topic_show.pl?tid=19773&hilite=play%20biting#141451] here [/link] that recently covered this subject.

hth
Pam n the boys

Our springer puppy was like this when we first got him he is now 17weeks and has stopped doing it. Everytime he bit us we yelled 'ouch' and pulled away from him, after a while he got the message that if he wanted to play he wasnt to bite, dont worry about the baby i'm sure by the time it arrives your puppy will be over this biting stage.