I need some serious help. I just cannot get my 7 month old chocolate lab to stop being so mouthy. It is horrible. All of his teeth have came in and I buy him new toys and bones every couple of weeks. He has a large variety of toys to choose from. Am I doing something wrong or is there an easier way to break this habit? Also, he has a really rough time when we have guests over. He acts like a mad person and is so excited and over zealous that it has become a real pain to let him around our guests. I have tried having him wait until he is calm to interact with guests but I still can't seem to break his habit. Any ideas??? Thank you!
Re: 7 month old lab is very mouthy Hi Sarah, We recently took into our home a young Lab (he was 9 months old at the time) and he was very mouthy too as his previous family had allowed him to lead them round by the hand or clothing. He was very careless with his teeth as a result. He grabbed clothes, hands and even faces! We found that what worked was immediately withdrawing all attention and interaction when he mouthed hard, then we gradually extended that to softer mouthing, then to any mouthing at all. Basically, whenever he grabbed with his teeth we would immediately get up and walk away, withdrawing the game/attention he was seeking through his mouthing. I know that some people are aversive to aversives, but we also said a firm 'AH AH' or a low, firm, 'Nooo' the second he mouthed, followed by the withdrawing of attention. Fairly rapidly he showed improvement, and 2-3 months later he now is quite careful and gentle (except when taking food but that's another story). Have you tried something like that with your boy? Giving him plenty of 'legitimate' things to chew on is also a good plan. With the over-excitement when visitors arrive, have you considered crate training? If your dog is in a crate when people arrive, he can't jump on them (of course, you need to get the dog into the crate before people turn up). The downside of crating your dog to control him when visitors arrive is that he is not necessarily 'being taught' to sit quietly, he is being physically prevented from interacting, so it is more of an 'emergency management tool' but it might be a useful one to have in your arsenal while you also work on training for a quieter response to visitors (a few ideas here for example). A crate can be a metal crate or one of those plastic airline crates for dogs. Crate training involves teaching the dog that the crate is a fun, positive place to be, so there needs to be a bit of training first. We had recommended to us a DVD produced by Susan Garrett called 'Crate Games', which takes you through how to create a motivation to go into the crate. You don't need a DVD though - crate training basically involves creating a positive association with the crate e.g. feeding the dog all his meals in the crate. There are quite a few articles on crate training online. Anyway, those are just a couple of ideas of things that have worked for me
Re: 7 month old lab is very mouthy that's really useful clicker training info for a calm dog when visitors come in. My 6 month old pup gets really excited and jumpy but only for visitors - we have taught him not to jump at us, need some volunteers to help proof it now. We did much the same thing for mouthing (although I realise our pup is younger), time out when he got really excited always calmed him down, we used the crate for this but tried to do it sparingly. good luck.
Re: 7 month old lab is very mouthy Hi there Dogs leap all over visitors because visitors reward them with attention. To cure this you need to prevent the reward. This means 1)using some kind of a barrier such as a baby gate. And 2) briefing visitors to ignore the dog. You will have to be firm with your visitors and you may need a clicker to mark the moments when he is calm as they may be very brief at first. This is a great video which demonstrates this technique Greeting visitors calmly Training a dog to be calm around visitors takes some persistence, but it can be done, even with the most excitable of dogs. Having your dog wear a 'house-line' or 'trailing lead' can help to give you some control as you move on to the next stage. The articles below may help too. Teaching your dog to relax How to cope with an excitable Labrador In older puppies, mouthing is often related to over-excitement, so teaching your dog to be calm will help. You might also want to read Playing safely with your Labrador. Pippa
Re: 7 month old lab is very mouthy Thank you to everyone for the advice. He is crate trained and we do use baby gates. I am just mostly concerned with fixing the behavior so he doesn't have to be put away when we have guests over. I will read over these articles and hopefully, he will make some progress soon. He has trained very easily in the past but his excitement levels are just so high when he is around people he doesn't know. I will keep with the ideas you all recommended and let you know how it goes! Thanks again!
Re: 7 month old lab is very mouthy Pippa has also linked to a good Kikopup video in this article here: Training Labrador Puppies. It's about training your dog not to jump up on people (it's the video under the heading '4 on the floor'). We are working on this at the moment...big test coming up this week when both my parents and in-laws come over for dinner. Eek!
