Hello, I’m new to the forum and have an 8 and a half month old puppy. She can be so calm and loving, but when she wants something and doesn’t get it, it’s an absolute nightmare. For example, after meals she loves to play, but if we can’t play with her straight a way she starts biting the carpet and us. Sometimes we give her a time out and sometimes we make noises until she stops, but she just keeps on doing the same thing every day. We don’t enjoy going for walks anymore, because when we go out and she doesn’t get to play with a dog she turns on us and rips our coats and gives us bruises. She only has one thing in her mind and it’s to play with another dog. For example, we went to the field the other day, let her off the lead and threw a ball because there wasn’t a dog to play with. But she didn’t even care about being off the lead (she just wanted to play with a dog) and she started charging towards us and started biting really hard. We have previously tried to distract her with toys, treats and sticks, but in the end we just have to hold her still until she calms down. She has been doing this since she was about 3 or 4 months and bites almost every time we go out. Please help! Ps: if she plays with a dog she doesn’t bite us at all and walks with a loose lead.
Hi Winnie, welcome to the forum I'm sorry you're not enjoying walks with your Lab at the moment. It sounds like you're struggling with a combination of immature impulse control, and a low over-excitability threshold. They're both things that can be improved with practice, and which generally eventually improve with age too. These resources on our main site might help, but it does sound like you'd benefit from a face-to-face consultation with a force-free behaviourist, if you can afford one. Good starting points are the CCPDT in the US, or the APDT in the UK. How To Calm An Over Excited Puppy How To Calm Down A Dog – Top Tips For Calm Dogs How To Cope With A Naughty Labrador Good luck, do come back and let us know how you get on.
Hi Sarah, thanks for your reply. I don’t think she gets over excited, but just frustrated that she hasn’t got what she wants and she doesn’t bite due to anxiety, because she has previously been scared by a hot air balloon on walks and not bitten. She is very good when we are in the car and she likes to be brushed. She also sleeps on her own downstairs and doesn’t chew anything she isn’t supposed to. A lot of the time she is very good, but when it is close to dinner she can get a bit fractious and starts to bite her bed and the carpet. Sometimes when she bites the carpet when it isn’t dinner time we sit at the front door and she calms down. Every time she bites it’s just to tells us that she wants something. In the past week she has been very good on walks, maybe because of our new routine. We find her a dog to play with almost every morning and in the afternoons we don’t see many dogs very often but she still doesn’t bite, which is very good progress. Also when we see that she starts digging and chewing sticks on walks, we do a find with some low-value treats and we also sometimes do this at the points where she has been triggered before, which calms her down. Is there a way that we can to teach her how to ask for something without biting?
I also have a 8month old lab who bites when tired or wants your attention. Not always, for instance yesterday was good but today after he had breakfast, I was talking to my husband and he jumped and bit my arm lightly to get my attention. I told him "no" and to sit but he seemed very excited so after a few attempts to bite, my husband took him or a walk. He's been "nippy" since he was born I suppose but now he has adult teeth and I try to figure out when it might happen but it varies. He can have 3 great walks and then for some reason keep jumping to get treats he knows I have in my pocket. (he doesn't always get them on walks) When he's too excited commands aren't listened too the way he is calm. Putting him in kennel works sometimes, if tired, although he'll bark a bit. He needs a nice dog to play with but so far only have little dogs in neighborhood that aren't that friendly. One bit him who got away from owner (not badly) but I'm sure that scarred him for bit until we meet a nicer dog.
