If your looking for one of the best strategies for how to stop puppy nipping quickly… without having to resort to hitting, yelling or getting all bent out of shape towards your dog, read this question that I’ve answered from one of my dog training clients:
*** Question From A Client ***
Hi Chet,
I recently purchased your dog training videos online. I am working through them but I am having quite a difficult time with bite inhibition on hands, clothes, legs you get the idea. I am not sure if I expect too much or am doing something incorrect. My puppy is an 11 week old Chocolate lab. If you have any pointers I would really appreciate them.
Thank you,
Nadine Cressman
>>> My Comments:
I’ve got two comments for you Nadine,
First off, you should find it helpful to realize that all puppies nip, and it’s normal.
And it’s helpful to realize that just like a human babies needs to chew on things when they’re cutting their first teeth, a puppy has the same needs.
This means that your puppy finds it extremely rewarding to chew, so getting rid of your dogs desire to chew is probably not going to happen.
Instead we want to try to direct your dog to chew things that we think are OK to chew on, which means you’re REALLY going to want to stock up on a variety of dog toys from Kongs, to hard rubber chew toys, balls etc.
Get your dog as many chew toys as possible, the first step to fixing nipping is making sure he has toys to chew on.
The second thing you’ll find it helpful to know is that your dog thinks chewing is FUN too, and your puppy is really just trying to play with you when he nips at a young age.
REMEMBER, when ever we can find the dogs true motivation for doing a behavior is when we have the strongest ability to control his behavior.
In this case, since we know that your dog wants to have fun, we can make sure that when he’s behaving the way we want him to (ie. not nipping) we play with him…
And the second he breaks our rules of play by nipping, we stand up, turn around and ignore him… thus withholding the one thing he wants more then anything — YOUR ATTENTION!
Keep ignoring your dog until he stops looking at you and wondering why you stopped playing, and then go back down and start playing with him again.
This will teach your puppy that nipping means the fun ends… so as long as he likes playing with you he’ll eventually stop nipping because he wants to keep playing.
It’s a gentle approach that doesn’t require you to yell, hit or get all bent out of shape trying to reprimand your dog for nipping too hard, and it’s VERY effective.
>IMPORTANT: If you do not already have my Hands Off Dog Training program it is a must have for all puppy owners. Getting a puppy trained right while he’s still young is the STRONGEST way to make sure he doesn’t develop problems like aggression, or out of control behaviors in the future.
You can learn more about my Hands Off dog training program by clicking here:
http://thedogtrainingsecret.com
Hopefully that helps!
-Chet
P.S. If you tried this technique and it worked for you, tell me about it, I’d love to share your success with other readers to help motivate them to want to fix their dog’s problems too!
Just send your story to info@thedogtrainingsecret.com and I’ll include it in a future newsletter.
Want to win a $500 in cash, just for sending in a picture of your dog in his Halloween costume?
