Luna is nearly 11months old and still does random biting and jumping at you when you least expect it, we had hoped she would have stopped by now but seems to catch us out! She is so strong now that it hurts ! We worry when grandchildren are around and elderly parents! Any ideas to help
You have my sympathy. My Tansy started this behaviour at about 7 months and now at 16 months is still jumping and grabbing but it's less often and less savage now (I don't use the word savage lightly, I've got scars!) Tansy does this on walks when she's over excited, over stimulated, worried, stressed, or something - who knows what goes on in their heads ☺ Advice from a behaviourist was to keep her on a long line so I had a measure of control and to distract the behaviour by asking for a hand touch before she leapt and bit. Then, when she's touched my hand with her nose, I throw a treat into the grass for her to sniff out and because sniffing is a calming behaviour she's suitably distracted. We've been doing this for months and it's helped a lot, plus maturity is helping to reduce it, and a growing understanding of what will put my dog over threshold (doesn't take much apparently!) Now that things have improved a bit and Tans is off the long line I'm more likely to ask her to sit and give her some reassurance, maybe pop her on the lead to keep her close for a while and that's helping currently. This long essay is really suggesting that you try and work out what is provoking the leaping/mouthing behaviour in your dog and provide a distraction behaviour to help her deal with it positively. Everyone assures me that Labs settle down eventually so hopefully you just need a strategy to help for a few months ☺
Hi, I have not posted for a long time. Our boy Eddy has just turned 13 months. He is mostly a good boy. He has a busy social life. One day a week in daycare , he doesn't need to go really but it's a very sociable event and has helped him to learn the rules of dog play. He has stopped running off when we see another dog over the fields, he looks, wags his tail and carries on doing what he was doing. If I know the dog ,I use the word greet and he will go and have a play. We take him to our dog friendly pub, he really enjoys all the fuss. My behaviour issue is with agility. He used to do puppy agility, because of his young joints. Jumps he could step over etc. Now he does' big boy agility'. He absolutely loves it, and is very enthusiastic and gets very hyped !!!. When he first started it was a very tiny treat for every apparatus. Now we are trying to get him just to have a treat at the end. The problem is he jumps at my empty hands looking for treats before he goes onto any of the apparatus. He catches my skin with his teeth. He doesn't break the skin but I usually have a few small 'tooth ' bruises and it hurts. The rest of the time when playing with us or taking a treat out of your hand we say 'gentle' and he is very gentle. Any ideas how I can stop this behaviour would be appreciated. thanks.
