How to Stop Puppy Biting

Puppy biting and mouthing is a natural and normal way for puppies to explore their world. However, using their mouths on people is inappropriate, and something we need to train puppies out of. This especially important for households with young children.

Puppy biting is an issue that needs to be addressed through training. It cannot be left and hope the puppy ‘grows out of it’.  You need to provide training and guidance.

Here’s a few pointers to help you begin to decrease mouthing behaviour in your puppy and train appropriate interactions for adulthood.

Check YOUR Behaviour

Sometimes subconsciously, we often encourage puppies to bite by being exciting.  Children are particularly prone to doing this, by waving their hands about and making high pitched noises. However, adults do this on a mild level too – for example, being patted on the head is moderately-exciting and can elicit biting in a puppy. This also extends to making sounds – screaming and sometimes even talking can encourage mouthing.

The first step in discouraging mouthing behaviour is to moderate your own behaviour to stop eliciting biting responses from puppies. Puppies rarely mouth things that are still or that are quiet. Avoiding ‘jerking’ motions and lowering volume and pitch can help to deter puppy mouthing, which can prevent the puppy forming a mouthing habit.

 

Provide Mouthing Outlets

Because puppies naturally enjoy mouthing, puppies should have plenty of outlets for mouthing, like toys. They DO need to use their mouths, we are just trying to deter them using mouths on you. I find puppies that have access to a dog to play with often do not bite people as much, just because they’ve already done all the fun biting games with their doggy friends, rather than people.

 

High Pitched Yelp

This is my absolute favourite method for stopping puppy mouthing. I find it very effective for puppies.  In this method, if the puppy mouths you, you issue a high-pitched yelp noise.  The idea is that this noise replicates the sound other-puppies would make when injured, and your almost ‘talking dog’ to your puppy, and explaining to them that their actions hurt you. Eventually, your puppy will hopefully realise that you’re a big wuss and seek to play games that don’t hurt you.

Victoria Stilwell illustrates this well:

 

Toy Substitution Method

Another method you can try is, whenever a puppy mouths you, to provide a toy instead for them to bite.  The idea is that the puppy will learn that toys are appropriate to mouth in lieu of biting people.  Unfortunately, this is somewhat difficult to implement.  You have to carry a toy around with you all the time, and there’s also the potential for you to be rewarding the dog for mouthing you by providing a toy. However, it is still a method you can try in reducing puppy mouthing.

 

The Punishment of Being Ignored

You can try disengaging or removing attention from the puppy when they mouth. This means that, if the puppy begins mouthing you remove your hands and stop paying attention to the puppy. This is not successful for puppies who will chew on everything! So, it’s all well and good to remove your hands and some puppies will stop – but if they continue by chewing your pants, not so good, and this method won’t work for you! For a puppy that is highly attentive to hands and hand-focussed, removing all hands can be significantly punishing to curb the behaviour.

 

Time-Out for Biting

You can try sin binning the puppy for mouthing. This is a hard method to implement effectively, but it involves removing the puppy from your company. This must be done quickly and calmly, and a neutral and boring place must be used (like the bathroom). You cannot us a place like the puppy’s crate or outside, where you want the puppy to have positive associations. I have had limited success with this method, but, at the very least, it makes me feel better! (And sometimes it’s important to give yourself a break like this.)

 

Physical Punishment for Biting

I only use this method for puppies that have persistently bitten despite the implementation of all other methods. That is, this is the ‘last effort’ method. For this approach, each time that the puppy mouths your hand, you are then going to use your hand to make the mouthing experience unpleasant for the puppy, and hopefully the puppy will cease mouth.  So, if the puppy mouths you, you can press your fingers further into the puppy’s throat (bad feeling for puppy), or you can grab the puppy’s tongue.  You’re not actually trying to hurt the puppy here, you are just making the mouthing experience unpleasant enough that they’ll stop mouthing.  I have found this method to be quite successful, but I prefer to use other methods first, as it’s not something I enjoy doing.

 

Put Your Problem on Cue!

In Ian Dunbar style, you can ‘put your problem on cue‘.  You can teach an ‘on’ and ‘off’ for mouthing.  That is, I teach my puppies that when I say ‘vicious’ they are allowed to mouth me, and when I say ‘settle’ they must stop.  There is some debate around the appropriacy of this method, and whether it’s desirable to train a dog to mouth you on cue. Personally, I’ve never had an issue with dogs biting people as a result of this method.  Indeed, this actually seems to inhibit inappropriate mouthing because the puppy learns that when I say ‘vicious’ they get rewarded for mouthing, and that there’s ‘no point’ mouthing at other times because it’s fruitless (i.e. the mouthing behaviour is put on stimulus control).  Because you are also teaching ‘settle’, this means that if your puppy does start to mouth at inappropriate times, you can use ‘settle’ to halt the behaviour.  Furthermore, it provides puppies with an outlet for mouthing, which is important (as previously mentioned).  Another benefit is that the ‘vicious’ cue can be a reward in itself, and you can use it to reward desirable behaviour in the future (even when you don’t have food or toys on you).  Personally, I see more positives to this method than downfalls.

 

Using Clicker Training to Reward Non-Biting Behaviour

This is a slightly more complex method, but still highly effective. You’d use a clicker to mark what you do want the puppy to do (i.e. not mouth!) and reward the dog for doing so. You then slowly build up the level of excitement you exhibit and teach the puppy to not-mouth at each level. Here’s a video that shows you this process.

 

You can use a combination of these methods, but you may be best to pick one and be consistent in that method for a week before changing. It’s important that all members of the household are schooled in your chosen methodology, and adhere to it.

Hopefully it won’t be too long before you have a puppy that is not biting and grows into an enjoyable dog for your household.

 

Other Resources

If you’ve added a new puppy to your household recently, you may be interested in our list of resources for new puppy owners.

16 thoughts on “How to Stop Puppy Biting

  1. Great tips! I must remember them for when/if I ever get another puppy. (We’ve adopted adults, 8 months and older the last few times and they didn’t mouth much.)

    The method I mostly used was the yelp and whine. It would work a few times, then not. But it was still my favourite non-offensive method. I also used ignoring a lot and still do for other bad behaviour that Georgia might have, like telling us off when we’re late with dinner! I have also used the physical punishment method, but not as you described. What I do is instantly make a fist in the dog’s mouth so that it becomes too uncomfortable/impossible for it to continue mouthing. This worked pretty well, but I guess is most effective if the dog is chewing on a hand to begin, with rather than a pant leg!

    Hope you’re having a good day. It’s 51 here today. Your heat has come our way!

    • That’s a good suggestion, too – thanks! We basically want the puppy to think it was actually pretty sucky to bite your hand, and to reconsider it in the future. But you’re right – it means that the puppy actually has to be biting your hand, as if the puppy is biting our pant leg or shoe laces, it’s not so useful.
      Wow, 51. That’s incredible! Keep cool!

  2. Gosh that was a lot of useful information! Thankfully I didn’t have that problem with Relay, but I’m sure I’ll come across it here eventually with one of our fosters. Great post! And thanks for the encouraging words on PoochieProject.com

  3. Hi – thanks for popping over to say hi! :)

    I’ve always used the ‘yelp loudly’ method to train my retired racing greyhounds not to bite down when they play. Being large adult dogs with no experience of being a pet, many of them do mouth too hard. It has always worked for me, along with a simple ‘Uh-Uh!’ command. I’ve always found that you don’t actually have to even teach ‘Uh-Uh!’. It’s a natural warning communication, being short and sharp, like many other warning sounds in nature, and dogs seem to instinctively understand what you’re trying to say.

    With puppies, it can be more difficult because they’re still learning dog language and should be practising on their littermates. Our fault for removing them from their mothers too early!

    • Thanks for stopping by. :) I actually have never had too much trouble the retired greyhounds I’ve had and mouthing, but I have found “uh-uh” to be useful for stopping most other ‘bad’ behaviours. You’re right- it is a ‘universal language’.

  4. We got Sampson at eight weeks old, we used the command “no bite” and put our hand across the top of his nose, not with any pressure, just gently across his nose. We then gave him something he COULD bite. Maybe he was just an easy boy because we’ve never had a problem with him.

    Delilah on the other hand is not a ‘mouther’ but when you give her a treat be prepared for her to take your entire hand. Yelping does not work for her. I have yelped, shouted OW, basically done everything I can think of. We cannot stop this.

  5. Thanks for your nice comment on our blog! So glad I found your site as well – though I feel like I’m about 5 months behind on reading up on some of these helpful tips for pups. :) Bella was a biter if there ever was one!

    P.S. Gorgeous site design!

    • Better you find us late than never!

      Glad you like the design too, but I’m very close to changing it, ha… Always the way!

  6. This was a good reminder that I needed. Our pup is much to old to still be chewing on us (18 mo!) but when we play with her, she always wants to start gnawing our hands. The hardest part has actually been training my husband to not let her do it! We agreed (together) to set a goal of the end of this month to have her trained out of it – I think it’s actually working. We mostly just ignore her once she starts gnawing or have a toy ready to substitute. (Got tips for training husbands???) :)

    • Jackie, why don’t you just let husband have fun mouthing games with pup, but on cue only? That is, if you say the word, then mouthing games are okay, but as soon as you say “settle” or “stop” the dog is expected to stop mouthing. That way your husband can still have mouthing fun, but on his terms!

  7. Hi Leema,

    I think, one can prevent dog from biting others by knowing the dog behavior. If we can spend some time playing with dog, training it by teaching basic commands and others, we can easily stop dog from biting or being aggressive at other people..

    Also, you have listed all the appropriate methods.. Thanks for mentioning every thing in detail.. Thank you so much :)

  8. Hi all,

    We adopted a 5-6 mo old Shepherd mix – the shelter thinks pointer but he looks for like mastiff or something similar. We use a crate for when he sleeps and when we are not home. Sometimes, despite going for a run and 3 walks, he will get in play mode and nip at my hand to grab my attention. I have tried the yelp method, which only makes him come back at me and bite harder and wag his tail. I try the ignore and walk away method as well and he essentially follows me and bites my hands or legs as I walk away. I have also tried putting a toy in his mouth and praising him when he plays with that. If I am sitting down, I ignore him and break eye contact but he continues to pester me until I react. Once I react or he is scourned he runs as fast as he can in circles around the furniture nipping/biting at every pass. We have yet to find a method to calm him down. Suggestions??

    • I am having the EXACT problem with my 3 month plot hound/shepherd puppy. I have tried almost everything and can’t seem to get him to stop. He bites any part of me he can reach, and ignoring doesn’t work because as I’m trying to walk away, he’s biting my legs! Also we are still working on potty training so I don’t want to leave him in a room by himself for too long. At first I attributed it to not getting enough exercise (due to his constant sniffing while on walks) but it seems you have similar problems even with enough exercise. Any advice would help!

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