hi ya i have a 8 week old GSD who is absolutely determined to eat my 13 month old son! we never leave them alone in the same room however whenever the baby is playing with his toys or eating or sleeping the puppy will bite his legs or ears. i know this is normal behaviour for a puppy but now my son is scared of the dog and cries when he comes near him and i dont want this to happen. the NO and LEAVE IT approach doesnt work and ozzie (the pup) thinks we are just playing, same goes for when he bites us too. How do i get ozzie to understand that biting the baby is a no no?  many thanks tasha

Unless you've taught your puppy these commands, he won't understand - dogs don't speak English :(

You really ought to be working on stopping Ozzie biting/mouthing ANY human, or he won't learn that there's a difference between adults and babies :(

There's some great information here: http://www.paw-rescue.org/PAW/PETTIPS/DogTip_BiteInhibition.php

You might also like to think about taking him to some puppy training classes, good classes will support you through the training and socialisation of your new family member. Ask your local vet for a recommendation.

As her pup is only 8 weeks old, he probably hasn't had his vaccinations yet, so wouldn't be able to start puppy training classes etc. for another 3 weeks or so. :(

Very true Topsy, but good classes get booked up early!

He's treating your son like another puppy and wants to play with him.

Try clapping your hands once but loudly and saying No at the same time, when the puppy does this... but when he does it to you as well as to the baby.

Quite honestly, this is going to get much worse before it gets better.  It's normal for puppys to play bite and your puppy is only 8 weeks old.  He is going to grow fast, his teeth are going to hurt more and it's going to take quite some time before he stops doing this. 

I'm sorry if I sound a bit harsh but I don't think you've made a very good decision in getting a GSD puppy when you also have a 13 month old child, who presumably is just starting to walk, and so also just about ready to start getting knocked down, walked all over, scratched, bitten etc. I can't think of a worse time to bring a puppy into a house. :(  You're just going to have to invest in a few safety gates and keep the baby and the puppy seperate if you want to ensure that neither of them gets too hurt. :(

I use a water spray, just a quick no and a short blast  can stop it in its tracks,  :)

i brought up an 8 week shar pei when my other son was exactly the same age. they got along great, however with my long term memory loss i forgot what i used to do then. i personally think this is a great age for a dog and toddler hence why i didnt wait. i do understand that he wants to play and completely understand what you're saying.

He hasnt had his injections yet but am definatly going to book some classes up when i visit the vet next, should be fun! i think i might try the water bottle, however he's a bit of a nutter and will probably enjoy it!

With the  greatest of respect, a shar-pei and a GSD are like chalk and cheese in just about every way I can think of. For a start off, a squirt of water to a GSD pup doesn't hold nearly the same horror as it does to a shar-pei pup. *giggle*

Personally, I'd use it as an excuse to teach the puppy recall. Every time he bites your child, call him by his name, offer him a treat and get him to follow you a little way away from your child before giving it to him. Then make a big fuss.

Try not scolding the puppy as it seldom if ever works. You could also crate train your puppy so when your child is feeding/playing he can do so in peace. Make sure you spend some quality time with each of them alone and try tiring the puppy out before you let them both together so he's not as boisterous. If you work it right, you could get them to be awake and needing your attention at different times.

i never used a squirt of water on my shar pei as he probably would have eaten me if i tried lol, he hated water as he was seriously ill with a skin complaint. i've never heard of the water idea until mentioned on here. i've actually been raising and deepening my voice a tad more saying NO and leave it and the last few times today its actually been working and he leaves the baby alone. hopefully soon he'll get the message that the baby isnt his toy :)

Good luck with your pup :-)

How old is your sharpei now?  Does he play with the puppy much?  Just wondering becasue my labrador is teaching my puppy a lot with regards to the bite inhibition.

hi ya no we had to have our shar pei, taylor put down just over a year ago :( because of all his problems plus he was going blind he was only 2 :(
once ozzie (the new pup) has his injections i will be introducing him to my mother in laws jack russell, should be fun he's about the same size, hopefully he'll pick up a few tips!

He won't know what NO or LEAVIT means unless he is taught. Remove the puppy from your son until you have taught him his manners , it may take a couple of months for him to be totally reliable with the mouthing but your baby will be safe!

You have to physically show him what he's doing and how to correct. IE with the off command , you would give him the command then lift him off the sofa/bed etc. If he's nibbling , gently hold his muzzle and tel[l him no bite and be consistant. Just yelling it in his face won't help the situation.

that sounds like a good idea, although i dont shout at him but in a rather stern voice say no or leave it and much to my amazement it is sinking in! just like to say that you guys and girls have been a great help and amazed at how much great advice ive been given and so far after only 4 days its all coming together so thanks once more, no doubt i'll be back for more :D

Here's an imaginary scenario.

You're at my house. You go to pick something up, and I say "Ashkim!"

What do I mean?

Have I told you what I expect you to do? Have I told you what I don't want you to do? Have I told you what the object's called? Do you understand me?

No. 

Dogs don't speak English. Until they know what that weird noise represents ('NO' = trouble) you're wasting your time.

It's best to set up training situations - for example, you can teach Off by holding a titbit in the hand and the dog will eventually stop trying to get it and sit back or move it's muzzle away; then you can click or praise and give the food from another hand or from that hand. (I usually do it from the other hand).

This is the basics, you can then start doing the same with food placed in more tempting scenarios, eg on the floor with your foot ready to cover it, and so on.... we have to "teach" the dog and reward the dog for obeying our commands... dogs may "get" what we mean by learning from our body language etc, but it's far easier to set up lessons, a good reward based training class will do this :)

Lindsay
x

I can vouch for that command,its amazing have been doing it with my pup since Friday (Ian Dunbar) trick,let it see the treat and smell and make it wait muzzle mustnt touch your hand so treat in closed hand,say off count,1-2 etc., when muzzle touches hand say off again,and start counting again,the dog will learn to keep its mouth away,I can now get up tp 20 with Zanta but I dont usually make her wait that long.
She has a habit of jumping up at my younger sons girlfriend,tried thismorning as they left she ignored them both and waited for 5 gave them time to get out of the gate,also is very good for stopping the playbiting well worth a try.I am also hoping this will stop her jumping up so much,as she is more focused on me than on other people. By the way make the dog sit while doing this trick,great for getting them off furniture too if you done want them up there use it as a lure first to get them down. 

Really the only answer here is to only allow the pup and your son together when you can totally supervise, toddlers and young children don't seem to cry out when they are nipped and mauled by puppies/dogs :(  If you are supervising closely then you can be sure that they learn to respect each other and that neither one can't do any damage to the other ;)

At times when you can't supervise totally is it possible to put the pup in another room (like the kitchen) behind a baby gate?  This will prevent the pup munching your toddler when your back is turned and acquiring a really bad habit ;)

Really the object isn't to stop all play biting, but to teach the pup/dog to only mouth gently, this bite inhibition will mean that both your dog and other people/children are safe, if ever a situation arises where the dog 'snaps' in self defence (eg when the dog is hurt ;) )  The website given above will teach you how to teach your dog bite inhibition.

Sorry, I disagree, a non member of the family could get 'mouthed' and believe the dog is about to attack - this could lead to a prosecution under the DDA if it happens in a public place - far better to teach the dog than NO contact should be made between dog teeth and human skin.

Unfortunately digger it is impossible to ensure that a dog NEVER ever puts its teeth on a human and it's no use bleating that he's trained not to bite when he's just bitten off the finger of a child who stepped on his tail this has actually been discussed on CD in past months ;)  Far better IMHO (and Ian Dunbar's and quite a few notable trainers) to train to only ever mouth SOFTLY and reinforce it regularly ;) that way the dog is never going to actually bite hard enough to break the skin, no matter the provocation ;)

I realise that Dill, but IF the worst should happen, and the dog has never bothered anyone before, then nobody can get hysterical about it.  I have two dogs - one of whom was never taught NOT to mouth (she's now 13, and lives happily as a member of our family, taking our wrists in her mouth as greeting when we come in) we live happily with it and appreciate her expression of welcome, BUT when our children have visitors, the number of times the kids have squealed 'she bit me!' I don't want to count.......  What do they say when they go home to their parents????  The other dog has excellent 'bite inhibition' in that she won't hurt much when she snaps (she is a rescue and has some fear issues) but when she snaps - she means 'go away!'  With these experiences in mind, I would advise this owner to teach the dog NOT to mouth AT ALL......

>The other dog has excellent 'bite inhibition' in that she won't hurt much when she snaps

'won't hurt much'? The other one will probably hurt less because she knows about safe contact, and is therefore the safer dog.

Don't you believe it - the one with bite inhibition MAY rarely give you a little pinch (maybe twice in 4 years has that happened)- the one who mouths can bruise - and the one who 'merely' mouths does it every time on greeting - the other one only when pushed beyond her limits....

Sorry to hear that your shar-pei had so many problems. They are a WONDERFUL breed. Mind you, so are GSD's.

I have shar-pei who's coming up for 11 years old and the only major health problem she's had is that she's recently developed glaucoma. She's been to the vet's about 5 times in her entire life and mostly minor things. Sadly, I lost her daughter in March aged 7. She literally dropped dead out of the blue with kidney failure.

Good luck with your puppy and toddler - I'm sure it will be resolved and they'll be the best of friends when they are both older.

i agree with you tasha199  i got brock when my youngest was 13 months we had a rescue before that when she was 3 months and my boys were 24 months and 6 and i got slated on here for getting a pup and having kids so young well i dont regret a thing brock is the best thing that happened to us he is a pleasure to own ,a pup at 8 weeks is only a baby itself and thinks its playing with its litter mates it will get better i had the same problem with brock but it gets better  good luck

Basically it is going to be a management issue until the pup at least has the maturity needed.  A baby puppy just doesn't have the know how to interact with a baby without hurting, if it were to come into contact with tiny babues of it's own species it would probably cause them damage.

I remember seeing a wildlife program where unusually a secodn litter had been born in a paxk of wild canids, sadly the other pups killed the younger pups simply by playing with them and treating them like toys.  If it had been the next year they would have been helping raise them.

So it is a case of keeping them apart except for staged meeting when the pup can be kept quiet and restrained so that the baby may stroke, and the pup only allowed near baby when he can't reach him ti nip or pull him about (say on your lap).

By the time the pup is ayear old and has learnt it's manners you will be able to allow more interaction and the baby will not ahve ahd a chance to get scard of him.

I have twice had pups (two different breeds) while one of mine have been toddlers, and it is hard work, and one has to be extra hard with training.  For example the pups only got petted in the down position, as even sitting they could knock the baby over.

thanks, he has got so much better over the last couple of days, he is starting to understand no. its a big relief as the baby is scared of him and i find that upsetting as he is a lovely dog. he's starting to realise the baby's not his toy as when he starts playing with the baby i say no, baby, and give him his toy to thrash about, dont get me wrong he still trys to play but now i dont have to physically get him off the baby. i cant believe how quickly these dogs learn as he is coming along in leaps and bounds in all respects, what a great breed!!

and thanks Phoebe my beautiful shar-pei is greatly missed after a short, poor life, we miss him like mad and our new pup brings back a lot of good memories :)