4 Tips to Help Stop Your Puppy From Biting
How do you stop your puppy from biting? How do you get through the puppy biting phase? Here are our five tips to make it through your puppy biting.
It is important to remember that puppies nipping, biting, and teething is part of the puppy training process. It is natural. Puppies use their mouths and teeth to explore and learn about the world.
As discouraging as this may sound, puppy biting and nipping will not stop overnight. It is important to just be patient but persistent. Your puppy will grow out of this but will need your help in learning that biting humans is not okay.
Don’t get me wrong, puppy training is frustrating. I can’t tell you how many times we thought we were progressing with Duke and Navy, and they would turn back and completely ignore or forget all of their progress. But after months of patience and consistency from Zach and I, we eventually saw improvements just as Duke and Navy’s adult teeth started to come in.
Take a look at some of the tips we found and used that helped us teach Duke and Navy as puppies to stop biting!
Set Biting Boundaries
Your puppy must know their boundaries. But it’s important to remember that their understanding of the limits of how hard they can bite is a crucial part of socialization. If they understand how hard it is too hard, then it protects against dangerous situations in the future.
Stop Playtime
When your pup is just a pup, they may think their nips and bites are playful. You should not encourage this behavior. You do not want your puppy to associate biting with playing. Navy was this way! To prevent this, if Navy nipped at us, we would stop playing, turn our backs, and walk away.
Simply Saying NO Might Not Work
Shouting once or twice might work by startling your puppy at first, but soon he’ll learn to ignore it. Sometimes, shouting or yelling can actually cause the puppy to become more excited! It is definitely normal to respond to a sharp puppy bite by yelling out, but it may not be the best approach for training your dog to stop nipping in the long run.
Give Your Puppy Something Else to Bite On
Your puppy needs time to play, exercise, and appropriate items to mouth and chew on. And believe me, they will find something to mouth and chew on whether you like it or not! One thing that really worked for us was carrying around a chew toy in our pocket. If Navy or Duke nipped at us, we’d give them a toy instead. When they chose the toy to chew on, we made sure to reward them.
Looking for a few of our favorite toys for teething puppies? Take a look at these below.
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I hope these tips will help you in your puppy training journey. Remember, training your puppy and seeing progress does not happen overnight. It takes time and consistency to see results.
Did you like this post? Check out another in our Puppy 101 series. If you have a question or suggestion for a future post in this series – feel free to drop it in the comment section below.
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