In tears practically every time I have to take Jenny out for pee and poop!!!

Hello everyone,
I'm at my wits end. Every time I have to take Jenny out, she will not stop biting at the leash and lunging at me growling and grabbing at my clothes. She will not stop, I end up dragging her back into the house usually still attached to my clothes and put her in her crate for a few moments to simmer down. I would have thought by now it would be better with her getting her big teeth, but she is determined to rip my jacket or sweatshirts which she has quite regularly. She has stopped doing this to John but is continous with me. She plays nice in the kitchen, not allowed in the rest of the house yet, we do training, sit, stay, paw, down and she is doing great. I don,t know what to do anymore about this, it's really getting me down. I,m feeling like I can't handle my own puppy. Any input would be appreciated. She will be five months old the 16th.

 

Your pup is almost 5 months and is still confined to the kitchen? I don't know if that is linked to her behaviour outside, but she's probably frustrated beyond belief. Unless your kitchen is unbelievably massive...i don't know, wait for the forum experts to chime in, maybe my gut has it wrong.

 

Yeah I have to agree with above. 5 months old and confined to one room? It's no wonder she gets over the moon excited when she gets taken out of it

I would start giving her more freedom of the house. Remove anything you don't want her to chew, such as pillows, remotes, decorative items etc. She will be very excited the first few times but she will get used to it and won't be so excited.

All lab puppies are nippy little things. I still have scars all over my arms from the jumping up and biting and scratching. Axel is 10 months old now and has turned into a wonderful little guy. But he was crazy until about 4 months old. Once those teeth started coming out everything changed

 

Have you tried doing lead walking in the house or garden to get her used to a lead?
What is she like on walks? Is it all on lead or does she get some off lead time?
She might be frustrated from being confined to one room. Are you in the kitchen with her when you are home?

 

If she has stopped doing it your husband, she will stop doing it to you. You just need to be consistent and keep on keeping on. Crate time out good. Wear clothes she can't hang on to. End all interaction when she starts being silly. It will come. We've had to train Jessie person by person not to be a jumpy silly a*se! Buy she has it now!

Jessie was mainly confined to kitchen until around 6 months unless very closely supervised because of the biting and chewing. I have small children, so they had to be kept apart. My trainer said this not an issue as long as she was being walked and getting mental stimulation through play and training, which sounds like you are doing. I also spent a lot of time with her in the kitchen!

Hang on in there, it will get better!

 

Jenny has run of a very large kitchen plus the deck right outside of back door. WE cleared deck furniture off and gaited it off so she has a lot of room. The deck is across the whole back of house. I have literally spent the past three months with her in the kitchen unless she is napping in her crate which she loves or if we are out shopping, etc.. SHe will go into it on her own from time to time. She also is off lease in yard to practice recall which she still needs work on. My yard is almost half acre all enclosed with high fence. We are planning on letting her into family room off the kitchen in due time but she is 95% house broke with occasional accident, but I worry because of the carpeting. It won't be much longer that she is gaited off from family room, fewer and fewer accidents. We plan on her having run of entire house in due time, two story with finished basement, a little at a time as she grows and matures.

 

I should have added Jenny is a very happy puppy and is biting less and less. She just gets crazy with me on lease but not al the time. Maybe my timing is off when I take her out, tired, etc. I have noticed she gets that way when she has to poop.

 

It's interesting to me that the more of these I see, the more of them are with the chocolate labs like my Libby who is 18 weeks old. Something about the color? She is a total crocopup but she has started slowing improving. She does not do this to my husband, only to me. I am told it will stop eventually and I notice in the past week things have begun to get better. Fewer time outs. I have found that she really wants to spend more time with ME. I spend a lot of time sitting on the floor, rather than the couch. I hold her chew stick, she crawls in my lap, and she chews on it instead of me. When she starts getting bitey with me and not the chew stick, I get up and leave her. She has the run of most of the downstairs and can go upstairs when we are with her. We have a hallway in our house and spend a lot of time having her play fetch. We have been to 2 obedience classes so far and I have found that she is responding to 'AH, AH' (the loud noise I make during training that means 'no') when she is biting me. I have had success in getting her attention refocused when I get her clicker and the treat bag out. She immediately stops the biting because she knows we will be training (which she LOVES). She likes her leash a lot and we let her walk with it in her mouth. If that's what keeps her happy on walks, then we're OK with it. I'm learning not to wear my good pants around her. She has put many a hole in my sweats and pajamas. Things are slowing improving.................

 

If your yard is all enclosed with a high fence then why not try taking her out to potty without being on leash? I know some advocate teaching them they are going out to potty and that's it, no playing, and keep them on the leash to be able to enforce this. But I didn't, they were allowed to play and they still got trained. In fact I find some walking around helps get things moving in the poop department especially.

 

It's funny you mentioned that about chocolate labs. When we still had Coco, one of the technicians at the vet told me that in all the years she worked, with dogs, labs in particular, the chocolate labs were the most neurotic. I've always remembered that for some reason. I too use AH AH and she stops biting for the most part.

 

I also find it really odd that a 5 month old puppy is on lead to go out for a pee and a poo - and also that she is confined to the kitchen. Does she get any off lead walks outside your property? I know you say you have a large garden but that's no substitute for new experiences outside the garden and off lead outside the garden (training sit, paw, down is all very well but it's pretty boring - you should be training fetch, recall and stop - outside your garden with your puppy having some freedom, on a long line if you haven't started that kind of training yet).

The biting, and the lead thing will all wear off if your puppy gets enough other things to do, and some other interesting things to concentrate on.

 

We went for shots yesterday and we were talking to the vet tech about all of this. I told her about getting her attention steered to other things like the clicker training. Libby and I showed her the commands she knows. The vet tech couldn't believe it for only being 4 months. She said it was excellent!

 

My vet tech just told me yesterday too that it's the chocolate labs that are the most problematic out of all of the labs! I have a 5 month old lab/beagle mix. Parents are purebreds. The pup looks like a mini chocolate lab.

 

I think that is an old wives tale!! We have had 3 Chocolate Labs and none of them have had any real behavior issues. Actually when I read about other dogs here, I think we must have angels.

 

That can actually be true as chocolate is the newest colour to gain popularity and if the pup was bred for colour while ignoring temperament, and health concerns probably too, then the owners might have problems training them. These days disreputable breeders might fix on any colour, even colours not allowed in the breed standard.

 

Interesting that the chocolate question is popping up again. As I am new to Labs and really admire the chocolate color, I did a lot of internet sleuthing on this question. In fact, that's how I found this forum as there is really good article on the main site.

Chocolate experts feel free to correct me, but to summarise: the general consensus among good breeders and Lab aficionados currently is that there is really no difference whatsoever linking fur color and temperament. Originally the only "acceptable" color of Labs was black, though chocs and yellows did pop up (and were sadly culled a great deal of the time). Yellows came in favour - so much so that as an American, my idea of the standard Lab default color is yellow.

Chocs gained popularity as a somewhat exotic color among pet owners (vs. bench/show dogs and the separate working dog line) and were until fairly recently bred for the most part by pet breeders looking to capitalize on the color. Arguably dodgy hobby breeders, breeding for color vs temperament produced a bunch of chocs that tended not to have the famous Lab temperament (that's a nice way of saying they were often bubble-headed spaz pups). As there were more of these bred-for-color hobby-bred chocs out there than well-bred chocs, the myth was born that chocs were hyper and ditzy. A myth that is slowly getting bulldozed now that good breeders (especially in working lines apparently) are doing more with chocs that emphasise all-round good breeding instead of just pretty color. Heck, now I figure if history repeats itself, the new "silver" Labradors will probably replace chocs as the darlings of the dodgy breeding-for-color crowd.

So there's hope that your choc is NOT genetically dispositioned to any naughtiness due to her color, just suffering the dreaded crocopup phase that sure does seem to strike a lot of forum members. Misery loves company? Oh, and everyone here seems to recommend lots of wine for this phase, so you may want to follow that oft-repeated yet sage advice.

 

I think that the likelihood of temperament being linked to genes controlling colour is unlikely to the point of being far fetched.

And don't forget that chocolates often have black siblings and black parents. Charlie's black sister is very similar to choc Charlie. Betsy's chocolate brother and chocolate sister are both very similar to yellow Betsy.

I do think some lines carrying chocolate produce quite difficult to train, high energy dogs. But these lines also produce black dogs as well as chocolate. Other lines produce laid back, lower energy dogs - and there are loads of laid back lower energy choccies around. It's just people remember the nutty ones because that matches a stereotype.

 

And, by the way, neither my Chocolate dog nor my Yellow dog from Black carrying Chocolate have pedigrees with even a smidge of dodgy hobby breeder in them.

 

I can empathize. The 16-year old love of my life passed away last March. We got Finn three weeks ago. He is a smart, beautiful, and cuddly puppy but he is Jaws incarnate. One thing I have found to be helpful is total ignoring (I turn my back or step over the gate) if you can get through the puppy teeth pain. Or...when we walk I put him on a leash and can control how close he is to me so when he starts to bite at my legs I hold my arm out. Finn has so many redeeming traits and I know he is a puppy so I'm sure we can get through this stage together. I'm sure you and Jenny will too.