Teething yes – get him toys, as advised above.
To echo the “yelping” advice: puppies in a litter mouth each other. When one bites painfully, his victim yelps and withdraws from play. That’s what you should do…yelp, stop playing, stand up and turn your back.
Do that consistently and I really expect success – it worked rapidly and permanently with my rescued pit bull puppy who had not been socialized to interact with people or dogs.
Sailboat
That’s why you do not want to “yelp”. Don’t yelp, it just confuses the poor animal.
If you own a dog, you should not try to mimic a dog. Be human. Yell, if you have to, but don’t mimic. Just say “NO!”
It’s a dominance thing, never let the dog think that he or she can “win”. Too many people try to control their dogs by being the “alpha male”. A human is no damn alpha male. A human is GOD! The dog sees this hairless bipedal thing leave, and it comes back with food. A whole lot of food. Best hunter ever! And all you did was go to the feakin’ grocery store. The dog is awestruck with your hunting abilities, but he also knows that you are not a dog.
You have to remember that when training a dog. The “dog whisperer” can bite me. The key to training is not to be the alpha male. It’s to be a benevolent god. A very friendly one, granted, but the human has to know its place in the symbiotic relationship too.
That’s just how puppies play, at least much of the time–they roughhouse with each other and play-bite. The first chance you get, watch a couple or three young dogs romp together; notice how much playtime involves wrassling around and chomping on each others’ faces and paws. Your pooch doesn’t mean you any harm–heck, he loves you! He’s just a big kid who wants to play with his best pal but doesn’t know his own strength. If he bites down too hard when you’re playing, a short sharp “No!” or “Ow!” then stopping the fun and withdrawing will get the message across to him pretty quick.
Do this. Say it in a firm voice and then ignore him.
After some time has gone by then give him a chew toy or rawhide. Kongs are good. Get one and slap some peanut butter in it and freeze the thing. Give it to the pup to chew on.
You should not play with puppies or kittens with your hands or feet. They will see them as play toys and chew toys.
You have to get them interested in chewing on something before they assume your hands or feet are available for this.
If you want to play then use a toy, always, never use your hands. Even if the pup gets your hand by mistake then again follow the above advice. Stop the play and redirect.
May depend on your dog’s sense of humor. I tried this with my pup and she thinks it’s hilarious. Luckily, she’s small enough for me to pick up by the scruff of the neck or turn on her back when she starts biting. Then her bites turn to licks.
We had a border collie mix and her mouth/ nose area was easy to hold shut. If she bit us we would hold her mouth shut, say “no bite” and then let go and ignore her. She hated having her mouth held shut and she was ridiculously easy to train so this worked.
I wouldn’t recommend the yelp thing. You don’t want her to think she can bite until someone makes a noise, or she might bite to hear the noise. You want her to not bite a person ever. So think of ways to make biting more miserable to her than not biting.
A Monkey With a Gun, it isn’t necessarily a “dominance thing.” Dogs have to learn both bite restraint and bite inhibition. They learn these things form interacting with their littermates, parents and other social partners. Most pet dogs these days are weaned very young, before social bounds have been established, so their social partners are by and large humans, not other dogs. Nonagressive biting can be any of a number of normal dog behaviors (play, grooming). You want to let the puppy know that you don’t like his action; yelping or any other “fright/pain” sound is how another dog would react and thus most likely to get the point across.
BanjoPup, Border Collies (and their mixes) have very strong herding drive. This may be part of the problem. Look into activities for him that will allow him to exercise his herding instincts in a socially acceptable manner, especially as he gets older.
JRB
Apropos of nothing, this kind of behavior is why my baby was at Save-A-Pet and other shelters for the first 18 months of his life. Pisses me off to no end - the last family that was sure they could give him a “forever home” left a 100 lb. still a puppy German Shepherd home, alone, unsupervised with no toys or anything while they went to work for 12 hours a day. He chewed on their leather couch - back to the shelter with him!!!
There are some people who should not be allowed the companionship of pets. :mad:
2.5" - Good God! I have a green plaid couch. If I did find a dog that matched, I’d be afraid!
I ran to the store today and bought him a couple of beef knucklebones. Hope they slow him down. Last night he made me so nuts I ended up crating him for half an hour just for some peace. Maybe he is trying herding me but he keeps hurting me by mistake? Damn homophones! :smack:
I don’t have N Geo channel but I found a book by the Monks of New Skete – anyone heard of them?
I read somewhere that a box turtle is a good companion for a puppy. Or maybe I’ll just go buy him a sheep. When’s lambing season?
Thanks for all the advice and I’ll let you know what works!
I have trained several puppies not to bite anymore by holding their mouths shut as soon as they even try to bite. I have a mini dachshund pup who is taking FOREVER to figure out potty training, but I broke her of biting me within 1 week with this method. I see an open mouth heading for me, I clamp my hand (firmly but gently) around her muzzle and say “no biting” in a stern, but not yelling voice. After I let go, I put my hand within view again, and if she tries it again, we repeat the clamp. If she doesn’t go for it, I praise her. It takes consistent repitition every time they go for the bite, but it has worked on countless dogs for me.
I used to press my dog’s lips into her sharp puppy teeth when she’d nip at me. She learned that biting me equals biting herself. That stopped it pretty quick. Also, the yelp/ignore treatment that auRa described is pretty effective.
Last year I adopted a giant, fully-grown but still immature, very mouthy pit bull dog. He had great bite inhibition (he never came close to breaking skin) but he looooooved chewing on me.
I tried all the tricks in this thread (except the Tabasco, because I know he loves hot sauce) and every single one (with one exception) seemed like a game to him. I couldn’t yelp or growl or gently say “no bite” or holler NO or stick my fingers in his mouth or hold it shut with my hands or anything like that without him thinking “What fun! Lemme try again and see what else she does when I chew on her!”
There is only one thing that actually worked, and it works well with any behaviour I want to stop. Since my dog is hugely emotionally needy, all it takes is for me to ignore him and it confuses him and breaks his heart a little. As soon as the teeth come out I withdraw my hands and turn away and act offended. He looks worried and confused and a little apologetic.
(FTR he appears to have two unrelated moods, one for “I want to chew on a human” and one for “I want to chew on a bone” - if I give him a bone when he is in the human-chewing sort of mood, he isn’t interested.)
He doesn’t chew on me any more, but he is still mouthy. Whenever he gets the chance he loves to play with other dogs by gently biting their face/neck (they do the same to him), and he still does it to other people who haven’t mastered my “ignore the dog completely unless he’s being nice” advice.
I agree with cowgirl. Yelping didn’t work with my aussie pup. She thought that was funny. So the new rule was that any time she bit, playtime was immediately over. I’d get up, walk away, and totally ignore her. She learned (it took a week or two) that biting meant an end to all the fun time.
If this is going to work, you need to make sure any other members of your household adhere to the rule, too. If it’s okay to bite your husband but not you, it will confuse the pup.
A 10 month old lab/collie cross is more likely to eat a box turtle than play with it. Even without injury, the situation is too stressful for the turtle. Don’t do it.
A lamb won’t play with the dog. The dog will eat the lamb. Don’t do it.
Incidently, dogs have all their adult teeth by 7 months old. Your pup isn’t teething. He’s being a jerk.
Dog training classes would be a really good idea at this point. Your dog is running the show right now. You need to regain dominance. If you won’t do the grab the muzzle thing, then you need some one on one time with someone who has enough experience to help you.
Wow, lab and border collie cross–that’s bitey mouthiness squared! Labs are retrievers, they are bred to grab things with their mouths and carry them around. Border collies are herders, and nipping is part of their arsenal of tools to keep animals moving along in the right direction.
If the dog takes more after the border side, then ignoring him when he bites is probably the better bet, because border collies are very willing to please and imprint solidly on a person they really want to impress.
Labs, on the other hand, tend to be totally brain dead for about three years, after which they suddenly calm down and become totally rad dogs.
My favorite way to teach that biting has consequences is to grab the top of the dog’s mouth, using my fingers and thumb on each side to push his lips between his teeth and my arm, then SQUEEZE while pushing down against the lower jaw with the hand that’s being bitten. It’s annoying to the dog and it makes his lips hurt and he’ll usually let go. As soon as he lets go, let go his muzzle and give him something legal to bite. Repeat ad nauseam if he’s more of a Lab, a few times if he’s more of a Border. 
Always divert and offer an alternative item to bite–play games that allow the dog to bite stuff legally and really clamp down. Some trainers say never play pull toy with a dog and if there are dominance issues I’d agree, but absent that I’ve never had a dog who didn’t absolutely love to play pull with a rope toy, digging in their feet, jerking their heads side to side and play growling. Soon they start bringing over the pulltoy for a game when previously they might go for biting a hand or arm. A few rules for pulltoy–always make the dog give up the toy when you’re tired of playing, don’t let him keep it and run off. Also, never chase him when he has the pulltoy, make him bring it to you for a game.
Another good question to ask is whether the dog is getting enough exercise, because boredom and bad habits go hand in hand. A dog who is tired every night has less time or inclination for mischief than one who’s left to his own devices too much–and a lab/border cross is two very high energy breeds combined.
As cowgirl and Monkey With a Gun seem to have a handle on – how to get your puppy to stop biting you has a great deal to do with the dog’s personality and general intelligence. A lot of advice assumes a dog is a dog is a dog. You need to know your dog in order to know whether the best interventions are aimed at ignoring or shaming or counter-aggressing or dominating or confusing or what.
Some dogs are very food-motivated and some are not (I had to laugh at the bearer of food as God references – our current border collie is very food-motivated and I wonder at the awe with which she regards us – not only do we effortlessly produce food for her on a very regular basis – for we are omnibenevolent creatures – but we bring home even better food for we of the hairless clan, and OMG! we will sometimes allow her a taste!!11!) Some dogs will cringe if you pop the leash and others will swing off the end of a Halti and still not give a good goddamn. I’d wonder what you see as most motivating for your dog.
I hope this doesn’t come across wrong.
With respect to some of the dog-knowledgeable posters, I think there’s some misreading or mischaracterization of my “yelping” advice going on. My advice was to yelp, stop playing immediately, get up, turn your back, and ignore the dog. People keep repeating “Yelping didn’t work, what worked was ignoring” like that’s some kind of insight. The ignoring is the key part of what I recommended, yelping is just stylistic. It doesn’t really matter much what noise you make, just make a noise to draw the dog’s attention to the moment of the bite, and then start ignoring.
I got that advice here and it worked wonderfully for my dog. Your dog may indeed be different, but this approach mimics the way most puppies learn, so it should work for a majority of doggies.
Sailboat
Thank you. This is what I was trying to say in my post somewhere up the page, but I think you brought the point across in a clearer way.
As an aside, can someone recommend a rawhide I could give my dog that won’t cause GI problems when she inevitably eats it? When we first got her, we gave her rawhides to chew on, only she ate them up pretty quickly and then a day or two later had some pretty profound diarrheal issues. Needless to say, we stopped giving them to her, but of all the chew toys save for socks and a rope to play tug of war with, seem to be no-goes for her. Is there a rawhide we could give her that’s easily digestible enough when she eats it to not cause problems?
I highly recommend Whole Meals. It is dog food designed as a bone. My dogs love them. I still feed them as largely chew toys, but it doesn’t upset their stomachs. I have a dachshund who gets stomach upset quite easily, but these sit well with her. Petsmart carries them in the Chicago burbs - not sure where you are.