puppy bit me, advice please.

[car93los]

We've been going through a little phase of puppy nipping and have been taking the advice posted throughout the forum which has been going ok.

earlier this evening my partner gave him a liver chew which i was putting in the entrance to his crate to him to get used to the crate, and as i tried to retrieve it from him he bit me and drew blood

now we're not sure which step to take next to nip this in the bud, any advice or tips would be greatly app

[emmabeth]

If you gave me a chocolate bar.. then reached otu to take it away again without asking me first, I would probably bite you as well.

Once something is in your dogs possession, it is HIS and you do NOT take it.

What you DO - is you teach your dog to swap, so he has something good, you want it (no matter HOW temporarily!), you offer him something better as a trade.

In the initial stages of training this, do not just take ANYTHING he has - if you do he will learn either to bite you, or to swallow down what he has whole. If thats a treat thats not so bad, but if he stole a 6" kitchen knife or a heap of cooked chicken bones, that could result in a dead dog. So, no matter WHAT the emergency, you NEVER EVER snatch/grab or chase a dog for what they have in their mouth.

Then you teach the trade;/swap, starting out with trading him his low value boring toy... in exchange for the super high value food reward YOU have right there under his nose. No brainer, he is goign to go for that. When he can do that all around your yard, house and out on the street, then you see if you can either:
a/ trade even though the reward you have is NOT under his nose (instead its hidden in your hand or its in your pocket or in a dish on the side) or,
b/ change the values of the items involved (so maybe his item is more valuable, or your reward is less - either or, not both!) or,
c/make the location for training more distracting

Each step you move up only when the previous stage is complete and you only change ONE thing to make it harder and ideally, make the other aspects easier.

So if he can trade you a stinky sweaty sock (pretty high value for a dog), for a piece of cold sausage you have hidden in your pocket in the living room - you could try it on the busy street next, but it would be wiser to go back to hot sausage under his nose for this, because the busy street is more distracting so the job is harder.
Or maybe he hasnt done any work on a busy street before, so you might go back to a boring item in exchange for sausage from your pocket.

You will figure out how your dog learns - go slowly and keep things EASY - makign things hard does not make him learn better, it makes you frustrated and him confused. Making things EASY to get right means he is almost always successful and never gets confused, you never get frustrated and he actually learns faster and the lesson stays there in his head.

The eventual goal of this lesson is that he will trade you something HE has, willingly if you ask or if he has found something, even if you dont have a treat right there, because in real life we dont always have a treat (though it is unrealistic to think you will NEVER reward your dog with food after a certain age, we ALL like to get paid!). Done right this lesson builds trust so when your dog finds a chicken carcass from a trash can, he brings it you to see if that gets him something better, or you can say 'hey, gimme that' and he TRUSTS that you WILL give him something better 'in a second'.

But you do have to work your way up to it, because snatching and grabbing from him even if you only mean it temporarily, will ONLY teach him to fear you around his stuff, run away with stuff he finds and swallow it fast before you can take it!

[misskris]

In the initial stages of training this, do not just take ANYTHING he has - if you do he will learn either to bite you, or to swallow down what he has whole. If thats a treat thats not so bad, but if he stole a 6" kitchen knife or a heap of cooked chicken bones, that could result in a dead dog. So, no matter WHAT the emergency, you NEVER EVER snatch/grab or chase a dog for what they have in their mouth.

most definitely TRUE! Daisy (4 months) has JUST overcome this - food aggression. It was only after a LOT of slowwww and patient training AND an emergency frantic call to the vet (she SWALLOWED her 2 inch remainder of bully stick WHOLE just like Emmabeth said)!!! LOL.

Emmabeth gave great advice. I think that for Daisy, we had to eliminate ALL high-value chews, like the bully stick, and we had to stick to very simple kibble in her bowl (I was supplementing the food in the bowl with chicken, yogurt, fruits, etc.). Then, I used the supplemental stuff to toss in her bowl and/or offer her while she ate to show her that people around her food bowl meant BETTER stuff coming (instead of just kibble). We are still working on the "trade" so I haven't given her a bully stick to chew yet, just like Emmabeth said, we want to be sure she is good at it before she swallows something else and it doesn't go down as well as the first one. haha...sorry, I know you didn't mention food aggression, but just adding it in because the aggression that Daisy had STARTED with the bully stick, then transferred to her food...so just in case. even though I hope it doesn't happen to you!

Best of luck!

[car93los]

i know the mistake i made was to take the chew and we've been trading with him since i picked up the advice on the forum

it was more to do with him going from nipping at us to actually biting me that we are concerned about, i know i was probably trying to get him to do too much at once and he sure was enjoying his chew, as i reached out for it he did growl at me! (first time for that!) and instead of withdrawing i took the chew

there's myself my partner and our 8 yr old daughter in the house and as soon as buster tries to nip us we've been yelping and moving away, and we always keep a toy/chew/plastic bottle to hand so we can immediately distract him from us and turn his attention to one of those and we're trying hard to stay consistant which is difficult with an 8 yr old and a cute pup

we thought we were doin great until last week , my partners mum came to visit and was basically shoving her hand into busters mouth and making growling noises at him , which of course he loved and took full advantage of so when she left we were left with buster trying to nip us

also he's still waiting on his second vaccination so he's under house arrest for at least another three weeks.

i'm hoping this was a once off as he seems a lovely dog, we visited my parents house and as thier garden is completey enclosed the vet told us it was fine to let him out to play and after running around for 15 mins he was happy to lie on the floor and doze, no chewing furniture or nipping etc

thanks for the help guys

[emmabeth]

Ahhh well the nipping is play biting, the BITE following the growl was biting - the one does not equate to the other if that makes sense.

Keep up what you are doing, if you feel he isnt getting the message you can use a time out - I suspect it may be easiser for the person being nipped to step out of the room, shut the door, count ten, than it will be to eject the puppy from the room, but either works fine as long as it causes the min. of fuss. You just go out, count ten, return and repeat this as often as is necessary, alongsides what you are currently doing - stay consistent with it because he WILL try harder and it does take a little while for the penny to drop.

I am slightly concerned that your pup isnt going out and about yet - whilst vaccinations are important unfortunately FAR too many vets put the fear of God into owners about taking the pup out.

You CAN and SHOULD take the puppy out - carry him, only put him down in clean places (ie, not a back street alley full of dog poo/wee!, or on the vets floor where loads of ill animals have walked), introduce him to people, traffic, other animals, clean healthy adult dogs etc etc.

By keeping him in all this time he is missing out on a HUGE part of his education - and he isnt really any safer for it as every day you leave, walk around, touch stuff and come home bringing germs with you!

Lack of socialisation, leading to fear aggression towards people and animals kills more dogs than parvo, distemper, etc EVER does.

[Nettle]

And do whatever is necessary to keep your partner's Mum from doing bloody stupid things with your dog - things that have the potential to create behavioural issues that you can just as well avoid if only people don't play power games with puppies.

[car93los]

emma thanks a lot your advice is helping, we have had him out a couple of times and we are taking care (ie letting him in my mums garden) and he has met my sisters dog twice (a 1yrold),
we have a garden ourselves but we do get a lot of cats and foxes in it as our neighbours are continually feeding them although we dont ever have dogs in there but we are more frightened of him catching something than his nipping/chewing, do think we're being over prtective?

[car93los]

And do whatever is necessary to keep your partner's Mum from doing bloody stupid things with your dog - things that have the potential to create behavioural issues that you can just as well avoid if only people don't play power games with puppies.

as i say that was last wednesday and we did feel that her actions had set buster back, funnily enough my mother in law took both buster and our daughter to visit her sister last night so we dont really know what they were doing with him whilst they were away although she did say he was well behaved and obv it was me who made the mistake with the biting incident

[doggiedad]

when my pup first came home i always handled his food
and water. i always put my hands in his bowls. i use to take
his food dish away, when i took his food dish away i always
put something of high value in it when i gave it back to him.
i taught my dog "leave it" so i could take things out
of his mouth or make him leave something that he finds appealing.
i think handling their food when they're pups help. i think you should
be able to take things out of your dogs mouth with or without a command.

[doggiedad]

you have to able to take things from your dog. a biscuit was lodged between
my dogs cheek and gum and i had to reach in his mouth to take it out.
i've given him bones and once they get to small or i detect sharp
edges i take the bone away from without saying "leave it" or "drop".
my dog carries things for me. i take what ever he's carring from him.
my dog retrieves the mail from the mailman and when he brings it to me i reach for it
and he gives it to me (no i do ot have a service dog). a dog should be taught that you
can take anything from him at anytime.

If you gave me a chocolate bar.. then reached otu to take it away again without asking me first, I would probably bite you as well.

Once something is in your dogs possession, it is HIS and you do NOT take it.

[Sarah83]

Please do NOT take the food bowl away while the dog is eating! It doesn't matter whether you put something else in, all the dog rememers is that you took it away. In 15 years of owning dogs I've had to remove the food bowl ONCE and that was because I knocked something off the side into the bowl while Rupe was eating.

I had no idea when I got Rupert whether or not he was a food guarder and I wasn't about to put myself in danger with a largeish, powerful dog by even attempting to put my hands in his bowl, not after living with a dog with serious food aggression for 9 years! Shadow was made food aggressive by having his bowl, treats etc messed with and taken away. With Rupe I started out well away from his bowl and just tossed pieces of chicken, ham, cheese etc in his general direction while he ate. Gradually I got closer and closer until eventually I was bending down and placing the extras in his bowl as he ate. Rupe is 100% comfortable with me around his food.

I used the method Emmabeth advises to teach him to give me things that he'd picked up. I don't see why we SHOULD be able to just take something from a dog without asking. I'd certainly kick up a fuss if someone snatched my fudge from me without so much as a by your leave!

[jacksdad]

you have to able to take things from your dog

To a point this is true, but just to a point....

HOWEVER, if you gave it to your dog then clearly it's safe, why are you wanting to take it way?

There is ZERO need to arbitrarily give than take just to "train" your dog to let you take things particularly if your are talking about their water or food bowls.

This is completely separate from training a leave it or a drop it skill.

[Nettle]

Being able to take anything a dog has in its mouth is what you get at the END of the training.

Just expecting to take things away from a dog is unreasonable. Training a dog over a period of time to give things up that it has in its mouth is what we aim for, but only if those things are dangerous. I can take anything out of my dogs' mouths, even reach in and remove things, but that is because they know I am never unreasonable about taking items from them, and I take the time to train them to swap and drop. Once they get their food - it's THEIRS.

[runlikethewind]

The reason why people think they have a right to take FOOD (corrected myself) off a dog without training is so that he/she is feels all powerful (even if they gave this thing to the dog in the first place... how ridiculous is that!) - again takes us right back to the stupid notion of dominance. If you learn things from a trade or form a notion of a relationship, you would do things differently. ie as explained on here.

I think training to look into a dog's mouth is something entirely different.

[emmabeth]

wi use to take
his food dish away, when i took his food dish away i always
put something of high value in it when i gave it back to him.

So if I steal your wallet, and then I put a few extra $ in it and give it back - you'd LIKE that, you wouldn't be really angry, and you wouldn't try to stop me from stealing your wallet again?

Taking food dishes away from a dog who is eating is just stupid. The dog wont associate the taking away with the addition of food, they will JUST see the taking away. It is a BRILLIANT way to create a food aggressive dog.

Doggiedad could you please read through the forums before giving out any more bad and potentially dangerous advice. You do not seem to be grasping the concept of positive training at all.