we have an adorable 12wk rough collie dog, the biggest problem is his biting, he can be sitting nicely and as soon as you stroke him he just has to bite it seems quite playful at first but when you scold him he seems to get exited and starts to lunge and bite harder. yesterday our 6yr old son was sitting quietly stroking him and praising him when the dog just lunged at his face and bit him! please help if he does this when he is much bigger it does not bear thinking about.

Hi
if you have a look on the general board for a post named
*advice for new owners - mouthing*
you will find lots of advice on how to handle the situation.what hes doing is natural but he needs to learn bite inhibition. :)

Hi - there are some helpful hints in this article.
:)

I was gonna ask the same sort of question this morning - Daisy keeps playbiting us ,so reading this article has been really useful thanks alot xx

Yes my pup has the same problem. A small water pistol or lour horn usually does the trick. If pup misbehaves i give her a squirt behind the ears and she stops. But she gets over exited with the noisy horn.

A loud horn or water wont teach bite inhabition - ( how much pressure is applied & what is acceptable IF any, which is a personal choice) Which is what puppies learn through the "mouthing stage".
Personally i'd rather any pup that i have did mouth & was taught bite inhabition than to supress it & never be learnt.
:-)

Well actually the water pistol works for abbie so dont go thinking you know everything, different pupies react to different things

The water pistol, I presume, is to STOP Abbie from biting altogether.

What Stanley is saying is that it is much better for a puppy to learn bite inhibition and they only way they can do this is by biting/mouthing. It is therefore counter productive to deter the pup from ever biting as they will never have the opportunity to learn what level of pressure applied is acceptable without inflicting injury.