Max is now 4 and a half months. I thought his biting was a thing of the past because he really hadn't been doing it at home but he went for a bath yesterday and the groomer said he was extremely mouthy. Any advice on how to nip this in the bud? He has a good amount of his adult teeth but I can still see that his canines are puppy teeth. He has been a jumper pretty much since we got him. We always tell him No or Off. Im not sure what else to do. His jumping is a problem at home because he has tried to jump on the stove when I was getting ready to cook. (My solution for that has been to crate him if my husband isn't here to watch him) He also jumps on our family when excited and he is starting to get big. Worse he jumps on strangers. I can get him to stop jumping on us at home by having him sit, but he's so worked up when we are outside that even a hot dog will not keep his attention to make him sit. Please help!
Biting is normal. He's still a young puppy and they investigate the world and initiate play with their mouths. He will grow out of it, but you can make it easier by removing all attention when he bites, for just a few seconds, and then reengage with him. "Removing all attention" means, turn your back, don't look at him at all, and don't even say "no". All those things are attention, which is reinforcing the behaviour. Have you taught him what "No" or "Off" mean? If not, you might as well be saying "Turnip" for all the good it's going to do.... and, moreover, you're giving him attention, which is reinforcing. If you go as far as pushing him down, that's even more fun, yay, the pushy game! If you watch Labs playing, you'll see there's a lot of jumping on each other and barging. Again, it's how they play. You're right to train an incompatible behaviour, so something like sit is great idea but, as you've found, it needs to be proofed against greater distractions. Things you can do are: Turn your back, cross your arms and ignore him when he jumps up, and have everyone else do this, too. When you're out, stand on his lead (so the lead goes from his collar to the ground and then up to your hand), so he doesn't have enough slack to jump up. Make sure it's not pulling on his neck at all, but is short enough that he can't get to jump. If he's too excited t take food, you're too close to the distraction. Back it up, and try again with the sit at a distance he can manage, before trying to move closer again. I hope that helps!
Thank you @snowbunny! That is super helpful. I will start working on that. You mentioned teaching no and off. Can you point to somewhere where I can learn about that? It never really occurred that I should - not sure why since I'm teaching everything else. I think the hardest part will be getting my kids to comply.
Well, "no" is a strange concept when you think abut it. It means so many different things to us, which means it is actually fairly meaningless in most circumstances for our dogs. So, it tends to be far more useful to thing, rather than what we don't want, of behaviours that we do want. So, instead of "Don't jump up", we reward "four feet on the floor" (which would generally be something we teach as a default, meaning we don't have a cue for it - we want our dogs to choose that every time. You would do this by removing attention immediately the dog jumps up, but piling on the praise and treats the second that all four feet are on the floor). Instead of "don't bug us at meal times", we could train "lay on your mat while we eat". That sort of thing. As for "off", it's easiest to pair this with "on". So, assuming we're talking about "off the sofa", you could start by throwing a treat onto the sofa so the dog jumps up to get it. Click (if you don't know about clicker training, it's a really fun way to train basic and even quite complex behaviours. You can read more here: http://www.thelabradorsite.com/clicker-training-whats-it-all-about/) ... sorry, sidetracked .... click as your dog jumps up. Do this a few times and lift him down after each go. After he has the idea, stop actually throwing the treat, but just pretend to - this means you're no longer luring, which is a very important step. So, you pretend to throw the treat, he jumps up, you click as he jumps, then you feed him a treat from your pouch. Repeat a few times so he realises that the treat is coming, even though he can't see it before he jumps up. Once you think the idea has "clicked", and you would bet £100 on him jumping up when you make your arm movement, you can introduce your verbal cue. I'll say "on" for the purposes of this discussion, but it can be whatever you want. So, you would say "on", then immediately after (not at the same time!), you would make your arm gesture. Remember t click as he jumps, and feed him a treat. Repeat a handful of times. Then, try giving the verbal cue alone, and wait a couple of seconds. This is to test if he has made the association between the word and the action. If he has, he'll jump up - throw him a party. If not, no biggy, just use your arm movement and repeat the verbal cue followed by the visual cue a few more times before testing "on" again. Eventually, he'll work out that "on" means jump up onto the sofa. Then, you do exactly the same process, but for "off" Just be aware that young puppies shouldn't be jumping on and off a high sofa that much at this age, so, since he's young, you might want to train this on something lower. Pretty much anything can be trained through the same process.
