The puppy is growing, the biting is staying: what to do?

Puppies grow up, but the biting sometimes continues. The puppy is 6-12-36 months old, and you’re still suffering from constant bites. Why?

Once you subconsciously reinforced this behavior, and your puppy is still thinking “Biting my human is so fun!”. What exactly could you have done?

🔸You might have rewarded your puppy with a toy. It’s often recommended to switch the puppy’s attention to a toy. But it’s one thing to give it to him, and another – to start playing with him. What the puppy understands from this is: “When I bite my human, it results in great fun!”.

🔸You might have “become a toy”. Some dogs enjoy biting, because their owner starts making funny noises, moving around, or even gets up and starts running away. “My prey’s running away! How fun!”.

🔸You might have rewarded your puppy with attention. You’re sitting behind your desk the whole day, while your pup is bored. He decides to bite your finger, and a miracle happens – there you are, moving, pushing him away… What fun! Even negative attention is so much better than no attention.

🔸You might have missed a chance to give feedback to him. Maybe you cried out “Ow!”, but kept on playing. This is exactly how your puppy starts ignoring your “Ow!” as something unimportant: “Well, “Ow”, okay, who knows what she’s “Ow-ing” about… People are strange…”

To show to the puppy that he bit you too hard, these bites must have serious consequences:

▫️Get offended! If he hurt you, you have the right to hold a grudge, before he comes back with an apology. Logical.

Works like this: you pup bites you too hard  you say a serious “Ow!”  and then cross your arms and legs with a serious face, stopping all the interaction with him  wait for an apology.

▫️If he keeps on biting you, just get up and go to another room for a few minutes. If this was his goal in the first place, to get you moving, then you’ll have to use the method of putting the puppy on a leash and tying it to something (make sure you train your puppy to sit tied up beforehand!).

Put the pup on a leash and start playing. As soon as he bites you, cry out “Ow!” and leave for a bit. The puppy stays, the fun is gone: “Biting hard is no good!”

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