As @Leanne82 says she’s playing, not attacking When they are little I pick them up when they head for me like that, always with a toy in hand to put in their mouth. Never turn your back on a puppy - chomp! .
Growling, biting and snapping are all play to pups. You need to teach her not to play with humans like she would another dog. Teach her calmly and gently and she will grow into a calm, gentle girl. Here are two dogs playing nicely - all snarl, growl and mouth.
Hello, she is not being mean. Its a developmental stage she will grow out of. Meg was just the same. I spent weeks giving her cardboard boxes and milk bottles to chew.. I still have holes in the clothes she swung on to. Think it settled about 6 months. She is now a peach, does not chew anything...be patient. its normal, particularly for Labs
Me again... I just had another episode. I was taking Rory;s leash on and she started attacking my hand and ankle. I was bleeding on two different spots on my ankles and my hand is cut up. I am so sick of this. When is she getting out of this stage? She is 18 weeks now. It is time for her to stop. It is hard for me to like Rory right now with all the biting she is doing to my wife and I. We have no kids thank God, or we might have had to give her up. I am sorry for venting, but this is getting old.
How do you teach her though? The people at the dog training class said to grab her lower jaw and squeeze. But that is hard to do and she is most likely to bite me on the hand. I have not hit her, but that is what my parents say to do.
I am not an expert, and they will give you more help but please don't hit her or grab her lower jaw and squeeze. It will just make her afraid of you. From our exact same experience we just had to put Maxx into his pen when he was frantically biting/chewing ('time out') and kept putting toys/egg cartons/plastic bottles into his mouth and eventually he stopped. I lost control a few times and tapped him on the nose and it really did not help one bit but made it worse. Don't apologise for venting, we have all been there and know just how hard this is. We very nearly gave Maxx back to the breeder but are now so very glad we didn't. He is still naughty and cheeky but calm now (mostly) at 7 months and we adore him. Hang in there!
It's a pity that Julie T isn't around much anymore, because her young dog was a total monster croc, way worse than Rory and it went on for aaaages. Sadly she's restricted her profile so you can't even search through her old posts. I remember her saying that as much as she didn't want to interact and get on the floor and play with this croc dog, she knew that she had to because Betsy needed that in order to grow into a lovely, balanced, adult dog.
Oh my goodness do not do that to her jaw! She will have no awareness as to why you are doing that and it will hurt her. How is the rest of her training coming on? Did you take previous suggestions to start feeding her from the hand only? So that she’s got a stream of food coming? That way when she’s getting bitey you can immediately distract her into a sit etc? Is she crate trained?
18 weeks is so young she’s still a little baby. Please don’t hurt her or grab her jaw, it will definitely not help at all! Mine still bit at 7/8 months (although it had improved) and looking back it was because there was no consistency with what we were doing. As soon as we withdrew attention every single time he improved quickly. We had Stanley through summer and we had to have no bare skin - no shorts or sandals and yes it’s frustrating. But as someone said it’s a puppy, it doesn’t hurt THAT much and it’s a relatively small part of the dogs life. Mines 2 now and it’s all long forgotten
@KirbyHawk75 Don’t ever hurt her in any way. This will teach her nothing good, but it will teach her to be wary and scared of your hands. I know They are crazy crocodiles at this age - All mine have been! It's 100% normal. Take heart, they do grow out of it. Wear tight sleeves and skinny jeans - wellies if necessary! Have a puppy toy on every shelf and in every pocket to put in her mouth. Here are some articles with the best advice to teach her. It takes time, you need lots and lots of ‘lessons’ - http://www.thelabradorsite.com/labrador-puppies-biting/ http://www.thelabradorsite.com/how-to-cope-with-an-overexcited-labrador-puppy/ http://www.thelabradorsite.com/how-to-play-safely-with-a-labrador/ http://www.thelabradorsite.com/labrador-training/
We are going through the same thing. It is so frustrating. We love Oakley but don't "like" him right now. He is almost 14 weeks. He is doing well with the "leave it" command and that works when he is just biting ankles and hands most of the time but it doesn't work when he gets in the this "maniac" mode as we call it, he turns into a different dog. The most frustrating thing is my husband isn't as apt to doing those commands, he results to stop it, knock it off, or quit, and moves his hands all around to get him to stop which results in puppy thinking he's playing and makes it worse, then hubby gets more frustrated. Ugh we are ready for this to end too.
When your puppy is over-aroused, there is no way he's going to listen to anything. He's like an over-tired child. Pop him quietly in his crate with a chew or a stuffed kong and let him go to sleep.
That's what we've been doing when he gets in those modes but hubby gets frustrated when he's constantly biting his legs and ankles and when he tells him to leave it he does momentarily then sits but goes right back to it, he definitely does it to hubby more than me but I also am dealing with (not always what I want) the inconvenience of dropping what I'm doing to deal with the puppy, he on the other hand will not drop things, I mean some of the time he is working and his routine has always been sit on couch with computer, doing his calls, emailing quotes whatever and it's his routine therefore changing it to him is an inconvenience that he doesn't get. For instance today, he was asleep in crate for a few hours, he got up hubby took him out potty he came in to play a bit, then he had to do something for work, puppy starts biting his legs and ankles I just feel like he'd always be in his crate lol. in turn I get frustrated with husband because he wont take the time,I'm not saying he never does because he does but it's frustrating that he wont use the training words I've been doing in training with puppy
Yea that's what I think but I'm pretty sure he's too old to be "trained" I think he thought this would be a walk in the park like with our 11 yr old lab, we got him at about 4 -41/2 mo old and he had already gone through a lot of this stage or he just didn't do it much, we actually think who had him before us were mean to him but regardless by the time we got him, he didn't do much of it at all. Our neighbor at that time just got a golden retriever puppy and they were and we couldn't understand because our puppy wasn't going through any of that, they had a new baby about the time their puppy was about 5 mo old and they ended up giving the puppy to someone else. Now I see why people do that although I couldn't.
Our Honey (12 weeks old now) has these mad half-hour biting sessions. Sometimes on a morning so she's just had a a decent sleep!. Me and my wife put ul with it but my son and daughter both retreat to their bedrooms (can't really blame them!). Good to know it's just a phase..
Our puppy seems to do it a couple times a day, one of them is in the evening. Thankfully today he has yet to have one, however we are trying to keep him in his crate on a schedule that I'm hoping helps alleviate this. Can't say I blame the kids retreating to their room, our 21 yr old son is doing this with the puppy and yes he's 21 lol.
I know it is h I know it is horrible. I was just remembering with a friend the period when I didn’t like Ashima all that much. I promise it will pass if you do the hard work now which is to constantly be trading for a bone, a toy, something even when they want to ignore it. Keep putting it near the mouth. And popping the little barracuda in the pen when you get frustrated is perfectly legit. Ashima is 6 mos now and I can say I adore her all the time, but it was not always that way. I also noticed that just when I thought I may snap the behaviors changed or lessened.
Hi ,i am new in this forum and I have to say it helped me to understand my Sonny a little bit better. I can see i am not the only one with that problem. when I spoke with friends that had puppies but different breads said that this is normal and all puppies bite a little bit and I need to be Alfa .but it is not the same I was thinking Sonny is 10 weeks now and as much as he is cute he has morning and afternoon biting attacks as well. I tried everything and it doesn't work. He is attacking my 9year old son and me really badly and barking and growling at us . I tried to be calm, angry, sounded like it hurts, being a bit rough( not really just firm hands and holding him on a spot and try to command) but nothing. It gets worse with any of those . He gets more agresive . I almost Lost my temper left him before I got to angry went to my room and cried like a baby . Hated him and loved him at the same time. But didn't want to go back. And as I left him on my last attempt that's how I found him fast a sleep. Hope we get troughsoon and we are attending puppy school in a 2 weeks
