My 7 month old lab is still biting. He has all his adult teeth. He regards biting or perhaps this is just mouthing as playing. He pulls at fingers to play. How can I get him to stop have tried NO, smacking on nose, saying bad dog etc but to no avail. He is a very loving dog when he is not biting.

Please any advice - Help sore hands & fingers !!!!!

Thanks
Carole

Be careful you are not giving him the attention he is craving by reacting to the biteing. It could be better to ignore it completely.

Regards, John

HI John

Value your advice very much. What attention is he seeking? As I said he is very loveable but he loves to bite fingers and hands - not aggressivley more "I'll take your fingers in my mouth because I want to play rough with you". The kids and hubby play fight with him but I don't should I stop them from doing this?? As I said a while ago he is a nervous dog with strangers and when out on lead shys away from people walking passed. He only bites the immediate family i.e. me, hubby and my two sons who are 18 and 15. He does not do this to father/mum-in-law or sisters-in-law(SHAME) or nephews just us. He is very much a mischeavious puppy at the moment - will take anything that he knows he's not to have i.e. newspapers, knives and spoons if left around on worktop(he seems to grow another 3 feet and develop this huge tongue which he uses to obtain these items off worktops).
Any advice would be appreciated. JUST LOVE HIM TO BITS THOUGH!!!!

Thanks
Carole

Hi Carole,
To answer "What attention is he seeking?" - any!

The worst punishment for a social animal like a dog is to be isolated and ignored - even being scolded is better than that (children are just the same!)

Play fighting is fine if you don't have a problem with the mouthing - if it is a problem, then don't let the dog think it's part of the game - stop playing as soon as the mouthing starts.

Hope this helps.
:)

Hi Carole.
Dogs can be very strange, often, to them, any contact is better than no contact and what I was meaning was that he has worked out that by taking hold of fingers he will get your attention. You see the same kind of thing in obedience with the dog doing a “Hander Recall” The handler, doing a stay exercise, leaves the dog. The dog gets up and the handler returns to the dog. The dog of course gets told off but figures that it was worth it!! The usual answer to that is to get someone else to put the dog back into the stay so the dog gets no success with the ploy. In your case, the answer is to ignore the finger biting so he achieves nothing by his actions and in time he will drop the idea. Just take the hand away and put it out of his reach. Just fold your arms and put your hands under the opposite armpit so there is nothing for him to grab. The fact that he only bites members of the family, never play biting “outsiders” points even more to the attention seeking.

Rough play is never a good idea although I must admit I do have the occasional play fight with mine but the play fight is always short lived and ends WHEN I SAY! I incorporate it into the training and it finishes with a short sharp sit command followed by a release “Good Girl” command. As such it forms a part of the “Control Training”

At this age he is growing both in size and mentally and is learning his place in the greater scheme of things. What can he do? How far can he push? And possible most important to him, Why do you put all the fun things up there?

He sounds a little nervy but nothing to worry about, the more people he sees the more he will learn to ignore them. In fact he sounds a lot like my Anna. She can be a little reserved on meeting her but it does not take her long to make friends. She used to back away from the milkman but now sits and waits for him and greets him as a long lost friend.

Best wishes, John

The advice Gwen Bailey gives is to say 'owwwwww!' and KEEP YOUR HAND STILL (or you turn into a walking talking squeaky toy :( ) and as soon as the pup stops chewing/biting to reward them with a game with a tuggy or something......

When itried this owwwwwwww it made mine worse he thought it was a game:)

The 'yelp' has to be loud enough to startle the pup and make it stop, or yes, you're right, it does become part of the game.

The thing that worked for us was to yelp just like another dog does when it gets hurt in play and turn our back and refuse to play for at least 10mins. Whatever method you choose be consistant, 24/7, all of you! We found that smacking on the nose serves no purpose, they just seem to see it as you playing back. If you want to use a command try something specific like 'no bite' each time rather than a generic 'bad boy'.