Hello all.  I'm writing because I'm having trouble with Poj.  She's 18 weeks old now and we go to puppy classes every week.  She's very sweet natured and generally quick to learn things.  The problem I'm having is wih her biting/nipping.  There are two times when it happens - one is whe we're walking and she'll suddenly get an interest in my legs walking and start grabbing my ankles with her teeth. If I ignore her and carry on walking she thinks it's a great game and becomes more enthusiastic.  If I stand stock still she lets go of my ankles but grabs them as soon as I start walking again.  She's on a lead and I say 'no' but I can't hold the lead far enough away from me so that she ca't reach my ankles. Any suggestions?  My puppy class leader still says to squirt her in the face with water, I'm reluctant to do this but getting more desperate.

The other biting is more troublesome.  It happens if we're in the kitchen.  After a walk I work in the kitchen (usually marking at the table, teacher stuff) and she's often very good and will play with her toys, have a chew or a bone etc.  Sooner or later though she gets bored of her toys and comes over to me.  She jumps up on to the bench and tries to see what's on the table.  I say no and ask her to sit and she gets more and more insistent until she leaps up and bites me - very hard, I have lumpy purple bruises on my arms to prove it - when she tries to bite I 'woof' (a high yelp makes her more excited) which doesn't have a lot of effect and if she hurts me I crate her for ten minutes and try again.  I realise she's bored at this point, but I walk her every hour and a half when I'm home and we play and I do fun training things with her too.  I end up crating her so I can get some work done.  She also lunges at Ade when he comes in the room and bites his legs - again some lovely bruises prove this.  I love her to bits and want her to be the sort of dog who's friendly and well mannered with everyone.

She also goes crazy when near children and cats (we have 2 cats, no children) - jumping up excitedly - any suggestions for this?

She is teething and has plenty of chew toys, chews, a stuffed kong etc.  She gets a lot of fuss and attention, we take her walking with another two dogs to help socialise her as well as her puppy classes. I'm just getting increasingly distressed with her biting as it's very painful.  How can I help develop her puppy manners and her 'soft labrador mouth'? 

Any help gratefully received - summer is coming soon and if I get in shorts and t-shirt people are going to think Ade is beating me up at home

Dont worry....My boy is nearly 6months old and I was just the same as you are now.Search all the threads on puppy biting, they all say pretty much the same and point you in the same direction.THEY ARE RIGHT it really does get better!
Ankles feet shoes etcetera are always the best too.
Karen

Just to reassure you, this is pretty much everyone's worry - it was mine and I was well prepared!
Talk to any pup owner and they are almost all deeply concerned about their pup's biting.

There are several good links which should come up on your search on here (Ian Dunbar's advice on one is excellent).

If your pup does get worse rather than better, you can do "3 strikes and you're out" - if you want to know more do PM me at some stage.
It may also be worth having a one to one with a reputable reward based trainer, try www.apdt.co.uk for one hopefully near to you.

Good luck
Lindsay
x

if you follow the links recommended from a search then trust me, with consistent application they will work! you have the additional benefit of not having to train a small child too - the combination of one of those AND a bitey pup being something awesome.

i can now look back in wonder at the days when i serious started wondering whether, instead of a pup, i'd actually bought a biting machine! and nips is now only 9 months old now so i'm not looking back through the mists of time through rosy coloured specs. ironically it's often just when you do begin to ask yourself why you've ended up with the bitiest pup in the world that the pup stops biting! getting their adult teeth helps no end though. not least because it can coincide with the end of the biting but also because those little razor sharp puppy teeth hurt so much more!

Thank you everyone for your replies.  It hasn't stopped Poj biting, but it's made me feel a lot better about it.  It makes me feel awful when she bites as I think all the hard work I'm putting in is making no difference, coupled with the fact I'm usually left with a very sore bruise.  I am taking her to a different puppy class starting next weekend where there are just four pups and the teacher is an animal behaviourist so I hope she'l have some tips.  I'm glad no-one has recommended squirting her.

She had a nice morning at the beach today and chewed lots of seaweed so hopefully it will be a little less chewing for me. 

I would like to put a link to you which Onetwothree would give you (where is 1-2-3?).  It is very good, will take you lots of worries and practical tips.
http://www.jersey.net/~mountaindog/berner1/bitestop.htm

Regards

Bagpipe :)

Thanks for the useful link, although it has now made my worrying worse:

"By the time the pup is five months old, it must have a mouth as soft as a 14-year-old working Lab; it should never exert any pressure when mouthing, and the dog should immediately stop mouthing when requested to do so by any family member."

My puppy is eighteen weeks - I really can't see her suddenly becoming a soft mouthed lab in two weeks time - so should I be worried now or is she 'normal'?

Don't worry - no two dogs are the same :) They don't read books (or links) :D Keep smiling - it WILL get better :)

Daisy

Also you'd be amazed how suddenly it does stop! With mine it's never been a case of rthe number of hard mouthings getting gradually fewer and fewer or gentler and gentler - one day it'll suddenly occur to you that all your bruises have faded and you haven't got any new ones!

As the owner of 8 Labs, 2 of which are 6.5 months and one at just 8 weeks, I can sympathise....But as everyone has said, it WILL stop, and you probably wont even notice....I take no notice of the pups, I simply remove whatever part of my body of clothing they clamp on to, and carry on as if it didnt happen... for a few weeks, my arms really do look a mess, then one day I notice that not a mark is left, I hadnt noticed the lack of biting.... All dogs need to learn to bite, to be able to learn bite inhibition, I would be more worried about lack of biting.

This morning Ollie (6.5months old) brought me a carton of 6 eggs, all still intact, 6 weeks ago it was a constant unclamping from my arms etc :D  There is light at the end of the tunnel....just a very long tunnel ;)
I now need to work on his persistant counter surfing :D

Hi - here I am Bagpipe!!  That's the link I would have given!!

Emma, don't stress about it - just keep yelping and withdrawing yourself from her.  Try to use a toy to play with and don't play with her when you're not holding a toy for her to bite, instead of you.  All puppies mature at different rates so take guidelines about age as varying massively.

You'll find that when she gets her adult teeth everything will get a lot better almost immediately.

I can definitely sympathise. My Dobe is 7 months old and only now can I say her biting while walking (ankles, feet, trousers) is finally getting better. According to my trainer, it started as an excitement, and ended up a habit - she would bite every time we went for a walk.

Shouting at her or other harsh methods don't work because they only make her more excited/stressed. She needs to calm down. Whenever she would start biting, I would stop, bend down and hold her by the collar/harness, and talked soothingly to her, while restraining her from biting. As I felt her resistance go away, I slowly and calmly released my grip on her collar, and slowly took a step forward. Sometimes, she would then continue walking, or sometimes she would try to bite again, so I repeated the previous, and then she would resume walking without biting.

It took long weeks of consistently doing this, but now I think we cracked it :)

Good luck!

Katie

I had forgotton all about it!, I was frightened to get out of bed to go to the loo in the mornings, dont worry, it will pass with a consistant approach

Thank you everyone - your support and kind words mean a lot.  I was lying in the bath this morning thinking that I was so bruised I look like a boy scout - however I will take hope from your messages!  She is a lovely dog, I was worried I was somehow teaching her wrongly and that her biting was my fault.  Her teeth are coming out one by one, I guess that's a good sign.  Many thanks all.

glad to have been of any help at all! i've also noticed that as well as the biting stopping, there's a sudden jump into an almost spooky maturity that seems to arrive out of the blue. i was thinking of this today while out walking on the beach at tidemills. only as nips cantered around, nosing everywhere but not running up to other dogs like an eejit and quietly coming back to have his lead on again that i seem to have a dog now, not a nutty pup. i don't know precisely when this maturity kicked in but it's certainly been passing the 9-month milestone that's had a serious effect on him.