I've posted this on another thread but it's so relevant to this. My lab is six and a half months old now and her biting is getting out of hand. She's got all of her adult teeth and is gentle at taking treats and will gently mouth now and again but more often than not she will bite me HARD. She doesn't really care where to bite me either. She likes to bite my feet, arms, legs and when she can reach she'll also go for my stomach. When she gets excited her default is also to bite and she when she's on a walk she will take a full run up and then jump up biting full force. She has adult teeth now and a strong bite and I've got bruises. A lot of the time she does it because she's excited and other times she will do it just for attention. Other than her biting she's a lovely dog. She has cuddles and plays mostly nice and she's responding well to training and learning how to walk on a leash but the biting is just dampening down what a lovely dog she is. She's not afraid, the biting is purely at me to get my attention. She bites no other people in the house and she doesn't even really get a reaction from me. I've tried ignoring her (very hard when those teeth are digging into sensitive areas!) and I've left the room, turned my back on her, distracted her, diverted her, rewarded her every time she approached me nicely and even put her in her crate for time out but she comes straight back and continues where she left off. She doesn't hang off my clothes and ankles any more and doesn't draw blood like she did when she had those puppy teeth but she's really pushing me and I'm starting to wonder if it'll get better at all.
Re: 6th month old lab biting Hello there I noticed you had posted this question a couple of times, but in other threads, and hadn't got a reply. So I split out your question into a new thread to make it easier for people to see. I'm sure this is all a bit worrying for you, but it's not unusual. We often get people on the forum who are dealing with pups growing up doing the kind of thing you report. It's often driven by excitement and/or frustration. Once your young dog learns to control excitement and frustration it will stop. You just need to keep being really consistent in never responding to her - try putting out your hands, palms towards her, to block her view of your face too, in a firm sort of "no" gesture (I wouldn't recommend saying no, but your body language can sort of say it if you know what I mean). The other thing that can help is training that develops her self control. I have a super excitable dog, so lots of sympathies. Repeating controlled movements helps my dog. My default is to walk in "calming circles", on lead, over the same bit of ground (it must be the same bit of ground) over and over until my dog calms down. A bit of maturity and growing up will work wonders too! Best of luck with it.
Re: 6th month old lab biting Could you get a clicker trainer to come in, just one visit might be enough to give you strategies and confidence that it can be sorted. Chepi used to snatch at my clothes but did grow out of it. Good luck
Re: 6th month old lab biting Gypsy did some of this too - she has just about grown out of it (7 months) but we get the occasional surprise arm-grab!
Re: 6th month old lab biting I totally sympathise with you here Rolo is 24 weeks old and still nips and bites. Especially when playing. My 10 year old was walking across the living room and he bit her ankle really bad. Made her cry. He's just being boisterous and playful, all play stops and we ignore him. If he continues he goes into time out. I'm looking forward to the day when this all stops hopefully it's soon!
Re: 6th month old lab biting I know it hurts and you may not believe me but her jaw strength is such that she can crush bone if she wants so she is actually holding back.....you just need to keep travelling that road until she learns its not ok to bite the people! I agree with the advice you e had so far, good luck, hang in there it will get better
Re: 6th month old lab biting Much sympathies....I didn't take ownership of Dexter until he was 5 months and he wasn't a huge biter....most of his adult teeth were through .he did hurt us a couple of times though ....but it was just over excitement when we were playing with him.we used to yelp loudly,stop play and walk away from him....that was enough on our case,if he'd have persisted I'd have put him in a seperate room to calm down. It will get better but it can really hurt.
Re: 6th month old lab biting She started puppy school at about 13/14 weeks old and did that for about 8 weeks and I train her every day and play with her and she isn't responding to any kind of 'no'. She is fully clicker trained but that all goes out the window sometimes. When I turn my back then she thinks it's great to jump and latch onto my clothes instead and can nearly jump high enough to reach my face. She's gentle round children and people but when she gets into that excited mind then it takes her quite a long time out to snap out of it. I'm just hoping that some more time will help her mature a bit more. She's also getting spayed this week so perhaps that would also calm her down a little because I think she's approaching her first season so maybe the sometimes it could be hormone related? I don't know. This weekend though we finally found something that scares her, throwing a baking tray on the floor worked wonders to stop her tearing at the floor and her bed. Not enough to put fear into her (she has none!) but enough to snap her out of what she's doing straight away and know that she shouldn't be doing it. I think that's going to help us a lot because she's incredibly over confident and there's been literally nothing that makes her understand NO. Even the trainer didn't know how to do it because 90% of the time she's brilliant. The only other problem is that I'm still having trouble with her peeing and pooping in the house at night. She's nearly 7 months, should that have stopped by now?
Re: 6th month old lab biting Personally I would avoid trying to give her any kind of shock or scare. Apart from anything else the practicalities of carrying a baking tray around with you will soon get dull If you're using a clicker with her than either start to capture the behaviours you want.....all four feet on the floor for example or train incompatible behaviours like "go to bed". If you're still having accidents in the house you may need to go back to treating her like a puppy, re-establishing a good pattern of behaviour and thoroughly clean any accident spots. Good luck!
Re: 6th month old lab biting I don't actually scare her, more like shock her into stopping when she's in that zone. It doesn't bother her just makes her focus on what I'm telling her. I have no intention of carrying it around but it seems to have stopped the behaviours I've corrected with it. I don't need to take her back to toilet training though because she doesn't mess in the house in the day time. She goes to the door and cries and knows not to do it in the house but she's having trouble holding herself. Some nights she's dry and others not. I think she's getting there but she seems much older than most dogs who can go all night early. She took a while to grasp toilet training in the first place though so maybe she's just slow at it. puppies are fun aren't they?
