How Can I Get My Puppy to Stop Biting My Arms and Legs?

 I'm Dr. Clayton Greenway with healthcareforpets.com and we're answering questions this morning that came into the website. Here's another one from Sandy and it says, "my dog is five months old, it's a Beagle Blue Heeler [Dr. Clayton Greenway: and she's using behavioral modification to deal with puppy bites that cause bleeding on her legs and arms]. She thinks it's a game, she'll nip and then shall run around like a maniac and bites really hard, it hurts, it bleeds, it's hard to catch the dogs, she is really running like a maniac.

 How do I stop my puppy biting my legs?

So I appreciate the question I like this question, it's an interesting one for me to come at because I'm not a behaviorist I'm a veterinarian so it's always good to go to a training facility get advice from from people who do this professionally and what's interesting about this and what I always tell clients is, these days training is all about positive reinforcement and not about dominance and not as much about discipline so with positive reinforcement what you want to try to achieve is that when the puppy kind of calms down, you want to positively reinforce that by giving a treat except it's it's really hard to implement that so and to execute it properly, so I'd have you work with someone to try to figure that out.

How do I get my puppy to stop biting my arms?

I do have a way that I've always told clients to deal with biting, but let's talk about a couple things before I get to it. When they get into this zone and they're biting, they're in a high state of energy, they're at a high energy level so you don't want to engage them at that time. You particularly don't want to grab their face because usually when they pull away they're gonna want to nip your fingers, become the play thing, you become the play thing.

How do I get my puppy to stop biting my hands and feet?

So what you want to do is you want to give that puppy things to do when they're in maniac zone. You want to give them toys stuff like that but you have to do it in a way that you're not positively reinforcing it. You just want to turn your back as well, you don't want to be the play thing so you want to turn your back, go about your business and wait until your puppy calms down a bit.

Now the one thing that I tell people to do in the appointment room that I think works really well, these things I have to say everyone has their different opinions about them, some people may disagree with this, but this is what you're going to get from trainers, behaviorists. 'You will get different opinions when a puppy bites another puppy.

 What is that other puppy do? It yelps and that's how they actually know they're hurting that other puppy and so what I do in the room is I take their puppy, they're sitting on the table and I put my fingers in front of its face and it naturally starts to bite on them.

You gotta remember these puppies, they explore the world with their mouths and this is this is what they do. In a sense they're teething, so they're gonna start biting on my fingers. Well the second they bite on my fingers I let out a yelp and I mean I have a really good yelp and in fact, before I do it I tell people that it's gonna be me yelping and not the dog because they actually think the dog did it and here's what I do. Okay I go like [Dr. 

Wshy does my dog bite my hands and arm?

Clayton Greenway: High pitch yelp] that big, that loud and everyone in the clinic can hear it and the dog instantly reacts to that and sees I I hurt this this person.It might freak them out just a little bit and that's why people may not go with that advice. It might be just a little scary, so you have to talk to a trainer or behaviorist and do what's right for you but the second I do that I then put my fingers in front of this puppy's face again and they start going like this and they start moving away from my fingers. 

They don't want to hurt me, they don't want that to happen and sometimes I'm not sure whether they're thinking they don't want to hurt me verse they're a little scared of my fingers so you have to talk to your veterinarian about this.

People have come back to me and said this works extremely well they don't see any other negative effects in their puppy when a puppy bites another puppy that's exactly what they do, so you are doing something that's naturally occurring so I don't see much wrong with that but other people may have different opinions. 

So collect your opinions, figure out what you think and employ some of those strategies and I think you'll find that they work pretty well. I really appreciate the question, good luck, it's not easy raising a puppy and keep those questions coming to healthcareforpets.com where we're dedicated to to your pet's health..