My puppy Duke is almost 6 months old and loves his people. He especially loves playing toys with his people, which is fine, but when he wants to play he'll bring his toys over and onto you. If you don't want to play, he'll just chew his toys on top of you- a leg, an arm, directly beside you and as closely as possible. I didn't think much of this until one day he accidentally got a good chunk of my arm in on a bite when he was chewing away at one of his toys... so needless to say, I'm now trying to teach him to play with his toys not directly on me. When I tell him to go, or say no, or push him away from chewing a toy on top of me, though, he just thinks I'm playing because a toy is involved. How do I teach him to play away from body parts?
Ah I feel your frustration! Sadly, I have no advice as I still have this problem. Axel is 6 months old and is so bad for this. Accidentally chews on me and play growls the more I try to get him off of me. Because like you said, he thinks I'm playing. He does this to anyone I have over as well which isn't ok. I would love to hear other people's suggestions for this as well!
I'm no help, I guess, because I enjoyed those sessions. Yes, I was nipped a few times by mistake. ONe thing for me, puppy was not allowed on the chesterfield, chair or bed at all. So those toy sessions with me only happened when I sat on the floor with him.
I'm like @Snowshoe as Juno has never been allowed on chairs, sofas, beds etc and all play has been on the floor. If I'm not on the floor, play is not allowed. That's been our rule since day 1 and I've not had a problem.
Mabel used to do this at 6 months as well, I used to sit on the floor and play. If she did it while I was on the sofa I would put the toy on the floor and withdraw my attention. The reward being sitting on the floor and playing with the toy. It didn't take too long until she got the idea. Consistency is the key though.
I'd try some games with rules, rather than just messing around with a toy - this is better for teenage dogs anyway. So train catch (use soft balls inside obviously), or carry the toy round with me, guess which hand, tuggie, just anything really so long as it has a 'you do this, I do that' element about it and as part of that you can train 'take it' and 'wait' and so on so it's not such a free for all with the dog doing whatever. Anything else with a boisterous teenage Lab is a bit of a challenge, really.
Yeah, I've never minded up until this bite because it was really hard and gave me a huge bruise- of course he had no idea he did it because he's teething and just thought he was chomping down on his toy, but yeah... definitely don't want it to happen again haha. He was on the floor when he did this but he had his toy sitting on the edge of the couch- I guess I just need to be persistent in making him back off when he's playing with his toys!
We do a lot of games with rules- tug, he loves fetch and we play that daily.. I think it's more so that he's teething so he's constantly carries a toy around to chew on and that's probably why I'm noticing him trying to chew toys on me a lot more lately haha. Thank you for the other game suggestions, I'll have to try those!
