I have a nippy Goldendoodle. Bully sticks are great and help her vent/exert energy. Training also is great - repetitive actions of sitting, staying, etc… the cognitive energy expended makes her tired and more docile. She is much better at 16 weeks than she was at 8 weeks, but is still nippy. At times I have had to put her on her back, but in the long run it really didn’t carry over to anything (for me).
The biggest help has been playing with other dogs. Dogs raised as pups in a litter frolic and play and bite each other, but have a basic communication system to let each other know when is “too much”. Taking the dog out of that environment, as early as we did, stops the intuitive learning. We have had several “doggie play dates” with other dogs (all older) that we met at an obedience class and that has been the best and most significant catalyst to decreasing the nipping. Everyone I spoke to said “it is normal and it will go away by 10-12 months” so I am hoping, training, and waiting.
With my puppy, I used a local “doggy day care.” They seperated the dogs by age, so all the dogs she was playing with were puppies learning about the world together.
I got my puppy at five weeks from the pound. Her litter had been abandoned right after birth and were “over-due” to be put down, according to the woman at the shelter. The puppy was very sick, so she probably hadn’t played much with her litter-mates even during the short time they were together.
I had to wait until she had all of her shots before I could enroll her, so she missed out on a lot. The first few sessions, she did nothing but huddle against a wall, but she slowly came out of her shell and started playing with others.
I had tried taking her all sorts of places to try to socialize her, but it wasn’t until I enrolled her at day care that I saw significant improvement. The puppies did what I could not. I really do credit taking her to day care with making her the dog she is today. She’ll never be really “normal”, but she’s a good dog none the less.
A bonus is that when she came home, she was absolutely exhausted and “a tired dog is a good dog.” We would have a few nice, calm training sessions, she would play quietly for a bit and then go to sleep. I didn’t have to worry about my things being chewed out of boredom or an excess of energy.
If I recall, the rate was about two dollars an hour. Some places include light obedience training, but not all.
How old is the dog now? I can’t see where you mentioned it except to say you got the dog at 8 weeks old.
I sort of wonder if they know much about dogs to be honest. There isn’t a dog alive that isn’t nippy when they’re 8 weeks old. That’s the nature of dogs. At that age my dogs nipped, bit and chewed anything. They’re babies. Almost no dog continues to nip when they’re out of the puppy stage unless they have behavior problems that weren’t addressed.
I know a couple of trainers at a PetSmart; one is very good and one is OK. It will vary from location to location. You can bring your dog in to the store and talk to the trainers and see what tips they give and how they treat both you and your puppy before signing up for anything. You can also ask the rescue where you got him if they recommend anybody locally.
I’m laughing at the image of Polaris bringing you sock after sock in hopes of getting some praise! My vet said dogs love socks because they smell like their owner. Please. I do NOT smell like a dirty sock!
One of my shelties does a similar thing. If I catch him being bad (usually chewing on a sock), he’ll roll over before I even start to scold him! As soon as I turn my back, he goes right back to the same bad thing!
Your dog would love it if you did. I’ve always imagined mine hearing the shower come on and thinking, “There she goes again! Doesn’t even give herself time enough to work up a good stink before she goes in and washes it all away.”
Human feet are amazingly stinky. In Mary Roach’s Stiff, she addresses (briefly) the power of the odor of the human foot-- that a dog can smell a spot where you’ve stepped days after you were there. So, in a way, maybe we do smell like dirty socks to our dogs-- they can smell our feet even when they’re squeaky clean.
My little dog, Sirius, will lay on the floor and stick his nose under my toes while I’m at the desk. I can’t imagine what an incredible olfactory *deluge *that must be.
I said in my OP that we got him in early January. He’s 14 weeks now.
My husband and I are cat people mostly, but we both had dogs when we were children. His was full grown. In my case, our dog was about 10 months old (and had been abused) when we got him, so he was not a good indicator of how a normal young puppy should act.
I do realize that nippy is normal for a puppy. However, he’s at a really excessive level, as far as I can tell. As I said, the shelter also warned us about it, so it’s not just us thinking that he does it a lot. I don’t care about the chewing of objects so much, but the biting is getting extremely painful. (And I’m not fond of bleeding.)
To answer some of the other posts, he was raised with his litter outside of the shelter itself (by a woman who works with the shelter all the time). There were five others, I think, and they all looked healthy and were actively playing with each other.
He doesn’t have any rawhide, per se, more bones of all different descriptions and flavors. I was just using rawhide as a shorthand because I’m lazy that way. He also has a large number of mostly rubber toys of various shapes and sizes (nothing fabric because we don’t want him learning that eating our clothes is ok). His favorite is the tug toy, the most distracting is the Kong.
I like the idea of the doggy day care - I’ll look for one. I want him well socialized; my previous dog HATED other dogs (see: abused) and it caused us no end of problems and a few vet bills over the years. No killed or permanently maimed dogs, thank goodness. (And lest you think us careless, we were very careful, but he was very large and strong and more than capable of literally dragging any of us other than my step-father down the street on our faces if he wanted to attack badly enough. Which is why he usually handled the dog walking.)
I forgot to add - the high pitched yelp is totally working for me today. Not perfectly, and it remains to be seen if it keeps working, but it’s a definite improvement. It’s not really working for the hubby, unfortunately, perhaps because he can’t hit a very high note.
Maybe he could do a “pissed-off-grown-up-dog” sharp snarl instead. A loud, angry-sounding “OUCH!” might do it. When the pups annoy an older dog, you’ll see them growl and snap at the pup and then studiously ignore it.
