Hi everyone Tess is 18 months old and the most rewarding thing in the world to her is being allowed to say hello to a new person (she likes dogs too but prefers people!). She is also very mouth orientated and when she is excited at being stroked she seems unable to keep her mouth shut. When we have visitors at home we give her a toy to hold in her mouth and this works very well but I would like to stop her doing this if I can. She is not allowed to run up to folk when out walking and we don't often say hello to strangers but there are situations - at dog training, in a beer garden etc when others stroke her and they don't always (or often!) check first. Any suggestions please?
i dont know how u would stop this but holly when she sees someone grabs a toy and makes this most god awful sound which to a stranger sounds like shes growling but shebisnt shes saying hiya her tail ia doing 360's and shes proper excited but to someone not knowing her they are like ohhh whats she doing if ur pup wants to mouth and a stranger gets a fright then a. they shouldn't just clap a strange dog to start with and b. u explain its just ur pups way of greeting if they dont likw it they step away j x
You have to train this in 'set ups' and it is inconvenient unless she also mouths you at home (but even then you would have to recreate the excitement of a stranger, by using a stranger....). It is very annoying finding strangers - the best people are those you know through dog training that you can grab to explain in advance. You train it in exactly the same way as no nipping. Stranger goes to pet her (which she loves), she starts to mouth, stranger takes a step back and disengages from her (you need her on a lead, obvs), stranger takes a step forward...rinse and repeat etc. You have to repeat this a lot and it's a real pain finding strangers. It works for jumping up too.
Pepper does this too, and I think for people who are not confident around dogs and/or are not used to young, big and excited dogs like ours it can be quite alarming. The tricky bit is training the strangers to step away when she does it... almost impossible!
Thanks for your replies. We don't let her say hello to many people when we're out (unless calm, which in the case of strangers is pretty much never ...) and I do wonder whether this has made her more excited when somebody actually does say hello and it's kind of backfired on us - either that or we've done exactly the right thing and one day soon it will pay off! I've tried to relax a little where she's concerned because I was quite stressed always trying to do exactly the right thing (and reading so much conflicting information on what that right thing is) and we found that it helped her to have something in her mouth when greeting people in the house, so she is allowed out more and more when we have guests. I usually tell them to say hello briefly (while she's holding something) then to ignore her and I often have her on her lead then, led next to me. My father in law was here recently and carried on stroking her (not listening to the part about ignoring her) and she was still excited to see him an hour or two after he arrived! It would certainly help if people wouldn't stroke dogs from the front on the front of the head, so all she sees is a hand coming for her nose from above - and then they get nervous because she looks excited so they bounce their hand up and down a bit (exciting for her!) then they tell her to 'calm down, caaaaaalm down', like that's something she understands! We took her camping a couple of times this month and she was such a good girlie, I'm sure we will get there with her - and if I can find a willing stranger to come to our house to help train this then I will - I'm yet to find a dog training friends because I'm yet to find a training school I'm happy to be a part of!!
