Humping little children.
We had a . . . jowely great dane once who had this problem. What I’d do is wait until I heard him drinking, grab a towel, then stand right by him as soon as he was done with the towel open. As he’d walk toward me, I’d wipe his face and say, “Wipe your mouth!” After about a week of this, I moved the towel onto a towel rack by the water bowl and when he finished drinking, I would say, “Wipe your mouth!” and point to the towel. After a few weeks, he started doing it on his own completely. If he came at me and looked particularly slobbery, I’d say “Wipe your mouth!” and point toward the towel, at which point he’d go wipe his mouth then come back for cuddles.
I imagine a similar method could be employed for just regular drooling-- the key is that you’ll have to leave gross slobber towels hanging around in the same place for your dog to wipe its mouth on.
I’ve used a very similar method to teach my two to wipe their feet after coming in from outside. I have a mat on the landing at the back door and a towel goes down at the top of the 3 stairs leading to the kitchen when it’s wet and yucky outside. They now run in circles up and down those 3 stairs between the towel and the mat for a couple mins before they’re allowed into the rest of the house. I stand in the kitchen and tell them to “Wipe your feet” to trigger this. So cute.
More on topic for the thread - Kaia was a standoffish dog for years and we’ve worked hard to make her accept love and attention. Too hard. Her latest gig is to put her head between your face and whatever you’re reading or to sit beside you and just collapse on your shoulder. It’s hard to be firm and consistent when it’s just a little more than we’ve tried to achieve.
Our one dog “says hello” by bumping her nose up into your crotch. Anyone’s crotch. She’s a large mixed breed dog, so I always tell folks she is 1/4 Hungarian Crotch Hound. An incredible percentage of people believe me.
Missed the edit, but The crotch hound is in the middle.
I’m going to try this!
I don’t mind getting slimed by the dog, but I think I can teach her to wipe her own drool jowls.
What I hate is when the dog decides that the best way to get my attention is to go chew on the futon. Or the rug. Or the chair. Or work on the hole in the drywall she’s been working on. She also likes to climb up the fridge (front paws as high as she can get them) to steal the fridge magnets. I don’t mind fishing dirty dishes out of the sink to pre-rinse them. I mind the furniture eating. Aside from spraying my entire house with Bitter Apple (which only deters her for a short time and she’ll just find something else I didn’t spray or missed), I have no clue what to do. She’ll walk past a dozen toys – some of which she loves – to go chew on a chair arm.
We’ve only had him about three weeks, so I’m sure he’ll get the clue eventually, but he must have had an owner who hated to carry around bags on walks, because he is very conscientous about never pooping outside the house. (He’s a rescue from downtown Baltimore.)
I give him his food, then walk him around the back yard for up to an hour, but he’ll never poop until we get back inside. Telling him “no” when I catch him at it has only taught him to never, ever let Mommy see him poop. We’ve only succeeded in creating a Ninja pooper*, who can poop in the dining room in only a few seconds while we turn to pick up the toy or change the TV channel.
*“Ninja Poopin’” fits beautifully into Satchmo’s “Hellsapoppin”, and that’s my earworm for the last week.
Have you tried the cow hoof chews? Or maybe the deer/elk antlers? She may need something harder to satisfy her chewing urge. Pressed rawhide might also work, but big ones are expensive.
Also, check her gums, if they are red she coudl be chewing to relieve gingivitis itches and aches.
My butcher sells bags of bones… for $10 I get about a 1/4 of a cow worth of bones that are deep frozen, then go into my freezer. My dogs like them even straight from the freezer and will spend hours working the centers out of them. If you have a choice, rib bones are the best because they’re thin enough that the dogs can eat almost the whole thing. They also love joints because of all the ligaments and stuff still left attached to them.
Psh, those things are like candy to her. I’ve also tried deer antlers and she destroyed that in maybe an hour (and made a hell of a mess). Her gums look pretty good. She’s only 2.5 and doesn’t show any signs of gingivitis. She’s probably ready for a dental cleaning soon, but her teefs don’t look too bad right now.
So far, the only thing that holds up to her mighty jaws are Kong toys. She loves Cuz toys as well, but as soon as she manages to get the squeaker out, she loses all interest.
Sometimes, I manage to distract her with one of her toys, but sometimes, she decides my hands would be more fun to gnaw on than her toys. She gets a time out when the “chew on mommy” starts up and I try to use the attention-seeking behavior to redirect her to how I want her to play, so I start in with fetch or tug of war or just smear peanut butter on her Kong to make it all new and fascinating again.
I also participate in a toy testing program so I can get half off the price of toys. Each month, the company sends me a new toy and I go online and rate how well it held up for her. She’s eaten about 6 or 8 toys completely and I think there’s maybe 2 that have lasted more than a few hours. If it’s stuffed or squeaks, I don’t even bother wasting my money.
I think what she needs is another dog to play with and I’m toying with the idea of adopting another, smaller dog, to give her a buddy to gnaw on. When she’s trying to bite my hands, she’s playing as she would play with another dog. Because she needs to see me as her leader, and not one of her pack mates, I don’t tolerate the “bite mommy” game.
She tends to do this, let’s say after her walk, and while I’m distracted with something like washing up a few dishes. It’s like, “Aw, geez, mom is busy with something and not playing with me for 30 seconds. Let me chew on this couch and see if she’ll bring me a toy with peanut butter on it!” I think she’s training me to over feed her. 
ETA: I will check out the meat market around the corner and see if I can’t get her a big cow knuckle or something. Bones don’t splinter until they’re cooked, right?
Correct. Raw (never cooked) bones are totally safe and most people (maybe not you) would be amazed at how strong their jaws are and how much of the bone they actually eat. My butcher processes live cattle, sheep, and pigs. So if your meat market doesn’t offer a good price, it would be worth it to call around to find a real butcher. A bag of bones would last one of my dogs about a month and it does keep them very happy.
That’s what I meant by “a real butcher”: there’s a meat market near my house that only sells meat. I assume they do their butchering there – I think they process deer in season and such. I’m a chicken-tarian so I’ve never stepped foot in the place, but I’m sure the dog would love a big ole cow bone. They have to be cheap (ish) and I’m all for freezing. Can I give them to her still frozen? (Thinking, it’ll take her a bit longer to gnaw it to bits if it starts out frozen.)
Begging, but maybe it’s our fault. We used food as a training tool, a reward, and now whenever we fix a snack, she’s right there. She can be sleeping on another floor of the house, but if she hears the refrigerator door open, or the ding ding of the microwave, here she comes. “Is that for me?”
It’s her only bad habit. Except for eating paper. Used tissues are her favorite.
Deer season is coming up, my dogs like deer bones as well and drag them home from where hunters have left them.
I give my bones straight from the freezer. The dogs know the sound of the bag, so if I even tried to put them somewhere to thaw out, they’d still be after them. The nice thing is that my dogs get any gunky stuff (bits of meat, tendons, etc) off while it’s still frozen (its the softest stuff), so the bones are basically clean by the time they’re thawed and I’ve never had to clean up any sort of mess (my dogs double as hoover vacuums).
When I run short of bones, I pick up a long bone (like a cannon bone) and fill the end back in with peanut butter (they can get about three inches down inside the bones). The peanut butter makes them ‘all new’ again for a couple days.
Dear Labrador: Do not eat random things that you find on the ground. I am tired of removing inedible objects from your slavering jaws.
At least Labs will let you remove stuff from their mouths. I had a Cavalier KC spaniel that would pick up toads. They were not tasty, he didn’t eat or even chew them, he just sat there with a mouthful of toad and it took forever to pry the poor amphibians out.
You are my new best friend.
- muah *
ETA: What flavor dogs do you have?
Oh I’ve learned a technique for this. My girl is an American Bulldog so she gets into lockdown mode when she’s snagged something she knows she shouldn’t have. I wrap my fingers around the top jaw, over her nose, so that my fingers curl her enormous lips over her sharp teefs. Then I squeeze her lips against her teeth. It hurts, so she loosens her jaw to eliminate the pressure of biting her own lips. Use the other hand to fish out inedible object and off you go. Works a charm!
I realize this wasn’t funny for you to have to deal with, but I’m dying over here at the mental image of a dog too proud to spit the gross frog out-- possibly with a frog leg sticking out its mouth.
Oh, yeah, I’ve also had to extract a dried-up squirrel carcass from my dog’s mouth. But it wasn’t as messy as the time I had to pull out the chewed-up ketchup packets.
I pried a dead rat out of a 14-year-old Boston Terrier’s mouth.
The notable bit about that: I don’t know how the hell a 14-year-old mostly blind and mostly deaf dog managed to catch a friggin’ rat. It must have jumped into her mouth or something.