Change The Way You Think About Puppy Biting Training
I want to introduce you to Watson. He is a 10-week-old puppy and his mom
has let us know that he is doing a lot of nipping and biting at home. Now,
right now, he looks absolutely adorable, but those little puppy teeth
are pretty sharp in there. We post a lot of videos on this channel
to help you to teach your dog to stop nipping and biting. But one of the biggest mistakes that
we find people make is they focus on stopping the dog from nipping and
biting when they're actually nipping and biting. But in this video, I'm going to get you to think
about puppy biting training, completely differently. I'm going to give you some strategies to
deal with that nipping and biting them actually has nothing to do
with corrections. I'm Kayl
McCann. This is Watson. Welcome back to McCann Dogs. First, we're going to talk a
little bit about management. Now. This is a tough one for people
because when we have puppies, they're little and cute. We just want
to spend all this time with them.
And one of the common mistakes that
people make is they give the puppies a little bit, too much freedom. Now you can see he's being a little
bit wild and crazy right now, and a couple of things that
I'm doing to manage him. So I can talk to you guys is I have the
leash on and I have something to kind of occupy him here. Now, if he didn't have a leash on and I
didn't have anything to kind of entertain him, he would probably be running around the
studio or he would be jumping all over me, but giving myself some tactics to use, to control him are going
to be really important.
So something that we really recommend
is that you have a leash or some type of house line on your puppy
at all times. And I mean, all times when your puppy
is not in their crate, we will talk about crates in a second. When I have some type of leash or line on, I can stop him from doing whatever he's
doing without chasing him around the house, which makes me look a little bit more
like a litter mate and him in charge without me having to get
angry and upset with him, I can immobilize the situation
and get him calm.
Um, without him self-reinforcing. Now my goal when I'm puppy training is
to put my puppy in situations where he can make good choices. So if I'm allowing him to just
be loose without a leash on, and he's constantly getting into things
that means I'm constantly telling him you're bad, you're wrong,
you're bad, you're wrong. And that's not really how I want
to be delivering my information. So you need to get yourself some type
of leash or line that you can attach to your puppy. Now, this is a better
line, a better leash for training. This is not what I would use in the house. It's got a big handle that
would get caught on things. You could cut the loop of the handle off. So it slips and slides through
the house a little bit more. You could get something
a little bit smaller. Um, so you'll have one leash for
training and for walking your dog, and then you'll have another one. That's just going to get quite
beaten up around the house.
Now, if you think about how many times you
have to pick your puppy up in a day, hook their leash on, put them in the
crate, take them out of the crate, take them outside. There's so many times where we have to
reach in and take a hold of our puppy. Every time we do that, we're opening up the possibility for
our puppies to nip and bite at us. So one of the things that we highly
recommend that you do is condition your puppy to accept you taking hold of
their collar so that all of those times, a days where you reach in take control, your puppy has had really good experience
and training with you taking control. Now, a little Watson here is
really excited about the food, which is great because this is going to
allow me to build a lot of value for me taking hold of his collar. So he's not done a whole lot of this
before his mom's only had him for two weeks. We've done a little bit, but not
much. And so what I'm going to do, yes, I'm actually going to reward him right
now because he's sitting here like a little angel and he was just being
so wiggly a second ago.
Good boy, I'm going to start out by
putting some food right on. Watson's knows that I'm not going
to let them eat it right away. I'm going to let them sort of sniff
and lick away with my free hand. I'm going to reach cute
underneath his chin. And I'm going to put my hand inside his
collar. And as soon as my hand is there, I'm going to say yes, and I'm going
to reward a couple of times. Yes. That was a giant treat. Good boy. Yes. And as he's eating my hands in
the collar, once the treats done, I'm going to let go. And the reason why I'm letting go when
the food is done is because I want him to think that the most special part
is when my hand's in the collar. So when the hand goes
in, the food's there, when the hand leaves the food leaves. So we are going to condition them to
feel what the best part is. So again, food on his nose, I'm going to reach
in, take a hold of his collar.
Yes. And then feed. Yes. And then feed.
And once he's done his treat, I'm going to release once again. Now
when I do this, I have the leash on. So if he decides to, you know, be wild,
all of a sudden I have some control, but after you do this a few times, the puppies will really start
to anticipate what's happening. And rather than biting at your
hand or jumping up on you, if they've gotten a lot of
reinforcement for sitting, or they could be standing even for this, but being patient and calm while
you're holding their collar, that's going to make all
of those experiences. When you go to lift them up or hook their
leash on a lot more pleasant for you. And it's going to teach your puppy
not to bite in that situation, but instead sit and be an angel.
Another common mistake that a lot of
puppy owners make is they allow themselves to be in situations where it's really
easy for the puppy. Significant bite them. When we have, oh, excuse you, what
do we have? Uh, a small puppy. We often want to have
the puppy up at our face. And of course we do because they're
adorable and we want to squish them and we want to kiss them. And
they're so adorable. But often if I'm holding him up
here and he's in his wild time, it's very common that he might want
to turn and nip and bite at my face. And now basically I'm putting him in a
scenario where he can make poor choices. Now, the other thing he's doing right
now is he doesn't want me to hold him. And if I was to just go, okay, and
just let him down and do his own thing, he's just learned a really bad
lesson. He's learning when I struggle. And I kind of do what I want.
You know, my mom will just let me
down and do whatever I want. So I'm gonna actually pick them up again. And if he starts to struggle in my
hands, I'm just going to tell him settle. And it might even brace him
against me a little bit more until. He relaxes, because I want to. Find an opportunity to tell him that
he's right. Oh, you're being a good boy. Now, though. Good. So now I. Might take a second to
praise him while he's calm. And then when he's in this state, I might put him down all he's going to
fuss again. So I'm just going to hold. Them for a second settle. Good boy. I hope I'm holding it pretty tight
against me. Here we go. Good. Now I can place him down.
So again, that's the lesson. If you want to do what you want fine,
but you need to give me something first.
The other thing you want to be careful
about with puppies is being careful about not getting on the floor and you're going
through your initial stages of having them and rough housing with them. Again, if in one situation you're saying don't
nip and bite at me and jump up my face and grabbed my clothes. And another times you're wrestling with
them on the floor while you're creating, but a gray area there. How, how does he supposed to know when it's
okay to play and be rough with you and when it's not okay, especially if you have kids in the house
or if your puppy is going to be around kids, that's definitely not a gray
area I would create for your pup.
And last, um, to do is, is with elevation. I talked a little bit about getting down
on the floor and holding your puppy up near your face. But the same
thing goes for, you know, getting up on a couch
or maybe up on the bed. Sometimes when puppies
are elevated like that, they feel a little bit more comfortable
to take advantage of the situation. So if you have a puppy that's pushing
buttons a little bit and maybe getting a little nippy and bitey or not
listening as well as they should. Try to just make it a little bit easier
for them to understand that you're in charge by not allowing them on
the couch or on the bed. Yet, we often have a lot of puppy owners
panic and say, oh my gosh, I, you know, I wanted to snuggle with him on the
couch when I watch TV.
Oh, thank. You. Easy, very nice cases.
Um, and, and that's great. We want you to do those things too. And that's something that you'll do
for years to come. But right now, when you have a puppy, that's learning the ropes still about
what they're allowed and not allowed to do. It's important that we're being really
clear and we're trying to avoid putting them in a situation where I might
have to correct him for biting. I don't really want to have to do that.
So if I can manage him better and, and sort of think about my situation, I'm going to avoid having those tough
conversations because he doesn't get an opportunity to try it in the first
place. Good pup. That's better. One thing that Watson's mom, uh, mentioned to us when she dropped him off
today is that there's a certain time of the day that he tends to
do more nipping and biting. And that's towards the end of the day
after she's had a long day of work and he's been in his crate and now she's
ready to wind down for the day.
And Watson is not, he
is still ready to party. And so picking and choosing what you do
with your puppy during times where they go through that witching hour, that, that time where they're a little wild
and crazy can lend to whether your puppy is going to have more nipping and biting
and crazy fits or whether they're not. So if your puppy has been pent up all day, or they haven't really
had a lot of exercise, and you're trying to figure
out what to do with them, to avoid them getting
into that witching hour, think about what you can do to them.
That's going to be
productive with their energy. That might be a really great time to
get out some treats and do some training with them to do some trick training, do something that's going to make them
use their brain in a positive way. Um, that's actually going to allow
your dog to think a little bit. It's going to get them focused on
working. And when he's working, he's less likely to nip and bite at me. That also might be a time where I practice
doing some tug exercises with him and let him release all that energy out on
a toy rather than my clothes or my skin. That might be a time to
practice some restraint, recall games up and down the hallway. I
promise you if you do 10 or 12 of those, your puppy will be pretty tired. And then you can go and hang
out and relax for the night.
Maybe have them lie with
you and chew on a bone. Or you might just want to watch your
show in peace with a glass of wine and throw them in their crate
again. And, you know, do another little training session
later in the night. But, you know, try to make sure that if there are
certain times in the day where your dog is energetic, try not to just
let them be in that moment. Try not to let them just be loose
in the house or that type of thing, because you know, they're more prone
to making poor choices in that moment. And it's normal. They're a baby puppy.
That's, you know, got a lot of energy. So instead, you know, kind of
stay one step ahead of them, do other things with them. That's going
to be successful at tiring them out, but also is going to put them in a
situation where they see that you're in charge. They like listening
and learning with you, which means they're gonna be
less likely to nip and bite at.
You at those moments. We've
talked a little bit about. Management now, but it's basically impossible to
supervise and manage our puppy. Every single second of the day, we've
got lives to live. We've got stuff to do. And there's going to be times where we
just cannot put all of our focus into our puppies. And a lot of the time when my
students come to me and say, you know, my puppy's nipping and I'm having issues
with my puppy being bratty and wild, I'll often ask them, are
you utilizing a crate? And the reason why I asked that question
is I want to make sure that there's some place that our puppies can go where
they can't get into trouble and they can't rehearse bad behavior while we're
occupied doing other things.
Good boy. And a common answer that people will
give me is that, yes, we have a crate, but he's not used to it yet. So we're not using it all
the time until he likes it. And what I want to teach you
about is that the crate isn't, we want to teach the
puppy to love the crate. And I'm going to talk to you about
that. But the crate is not optional. We want to be able to put the puppy in
the crate whenever we need to at any time that we need to. So, you know, he's
being pretty, pretty good right now, but I'm just actually going to throw
him in the crate here.
And, um, I could use a little bit
of food. I can help them. Or if you have a puppy that's
really resistant to go in, just place them in the
crate. Here bud, good boy. I might toss a few cookies in there.
Get your little bum in there too. It was not very graceful.
There we go. That's okay. And then I'm going to just shut the door
and then I might just hang out here for a second.
And if he's
quiet in the crate, yes, the boy I can reward him for that. I might put him in the crate and give
him something to do while he's in there. I might, you know, put us a treats in a Kong or give him a
really yummy bone to chew on when he's in there. So he has something to do, but whether he's tired or
energetic or whatever it might be, if you have a zoom meeting to jump on,
or if you have to run the kids down to, you know, a soccer game
or whatever it might be, we need our puppies to be able to go
in and out of this crate all day long.
Now you are going to work on building
value for teaching your puppy to go in the crate. And we actually have great videos that
specifically walk you through that type of training session, but don't be afraid to use your dog's
crate for hours at a time during the day minutes at the time, if you need to have
a shower, pop your puppy in the crate, because if you're showering your
puppies running around the kitchen, while you're doing your own thing, who knows what kind of mischief that
they're getting into.
So again, hi Bubba. What we want to try and do with our
puppies is mold and shape them to do the right things. And if we're putting our puppy in a
scenario where it's too easy for them to make a bad choice, if you're in the other room and
your kids are playing with the puppy unsupervised, you're opening up the possibility for
your puppy to nip and bite them without any consequence. So you have utilized
your crate to the best of your ability. Sometimes it's a bit
challenging in the beginning, but once they understand that this is
their place to kind of hang out and chill, you can use it as much as you want.
And as the puppy gets more training, you may choose later in life
to wean off of it a little bit. But for now we want to utilize the crate
so that you have an opportunity to have a break from managing and training your
dog.
And that's going to reduce nipping. A lot. Look into my eyes, look into my eyes. I will mesmerize and hypnotize
you into being a good puppy. This it didn't work. Another. Mistake that may lead to your puppy, doing more nipping and biting is
a lack of consistency in the home. And this could be between
the adults in the house. This could be maybe between
kids and adults in the house, but dogs really crave consistency
in a lot of clarity in their rules. So it's really important that you sit
down with your family members or whoever's going to be interacting with the puppy
and decide what you like and what you don't like about the puppy's behavior. Hopefully everybody's on the same page
that nobody wants puppies, nipping, and biting at them or their clothes.
And if that's what the rule is, everybody needs to be following through.
Because if sometimes we're letting it
go or other times we're a little slow to respond, it can be very confusing for our puppies
and the road to success is going to be a lot more slow. Now I do want
to address the kid thing though, because we do have kids and puppies
together, which can be very, very durable, but puppies are a lot more prone to nip
and bite at kids because they view them.
As you know, you know, more as litter
mates, they squeak these squawk. They run, they're cute. They're fast.
They're very attractive to puppies. And a lot of puppies, you know, are, are more prone to nipping and
biting at them. And, you know, we would never suggest for kids to be
in charge of disciplining or addressing the nipping. We would always
want the adults to be doing that. So when you have your kids
and your puppies together, there needs to be 100% supervision so
that if your puppy makes a poor choice, you're able to step in there
and do something about it. Now, the premise of this video is not so
much correcting your puppy from bite, from biting. It's teaching your puppy,
not to bite by having better training. So when I have my puppy
around kids, I'm going to, to avoid situations where
my puppy might nip at them.
I'm not going to let the
kids run around or, you know, jump on the puppy or be poking at the
puppy or wagging their toys up everywhere. If kids are going to be kids, I'm going to put the puppy in the
crate and let the kids do their thing. If the puppy is out with the kids,
we want to work on calmer exercises. There's so many great things that you
can do to get your kids involved with the puppies, like having them, you know, get your puppy to sit or teach your
puppy a fun trick, and then have the, you know, the kids play
around with that. Um, but teaching your puppy to sit and be
calm and accept food and accept calm. Praise is a really great way
to start teaching the puppy, how to behave better
around the kids. But again, think about the scenario that you're
putting the child and the dog in or the puppy in and decide whether it's an
opportunity for your puppy to make poor choices or whether you're
controlling the situation. So your puppy can learn what
they should be doing differently.
Now they have some great management and
leadership tips underneath your belt. It's time to learn more
about puppy biting training, click that card right there to
check out our puppy biting playlist, give you're looking for some more help
with your puppy out for biting issues. Make sure you check out our
Puppy Essentials online course, we will have an opportunity to get
feedback and instruction from our professional trainers. The link to that is in the
description below on that note, this is Watson I'm Kayl, happy training..
