Zoey has a bad habit of biting. She's only 6 months old, so I can assume she's massaging her teeth, but it's gotten to the point where it hurts. Is there any behavioral way to address?
Well, the best way is to redirect her biting, offer her a toy or something to chew on. We bought a large anco root and Bramble really enjoyed getting her teeth into that! Frozen kongs are great too, especially if she is teething. There really is no way to address biting from behavioural perspective, namely because chewing is a natural behaviour for pups, it is just difficult for us fragile humans who are not quite as robust as their siblings! Take heart though, it really does get better!
6 months old and just "gotten to the point where it hurts"? I think you should count your blessings, many of us had arms in tatters a lot earlier in the crocopup stage I'd try not to think of it as aggressive or "a bad habit", it's really not. As you already said, it's playing. She simply hasn't learnt what is appropriate yet. All puppies bite, to a greater or lesser extent. They will grow out of it given time and kind redirection. @Boogie might be so kind as to paste in some advice I gave in the past about how I proactively train it - she's far more organised that I, and has it stored somewhere
Here it is All is play. If you watch two pups playing everything is done with teeth. It takes them time to discover humans can't play in this way. By around six months old they stop the mouthing and biting, in the mean time you need to be very patient and train well. Wear skinny jeans and tight sleeves. I even needed to wear wellies indoors with one of mine! Here is @snowbunny 's excellent advice - Be absolutely consistent. If your puppy is over-tired, just pop him in his crate as you have no chance of teaching him anything when he's manic. For normal puppy biting, I actually set up training opportunities rather than simply reacting to it when it happens. Training sessions allow repetition and so aid learning. With my first puppy, Willow, I used a method where I'd sit on the floor playing with her and the instant she bit too hard, I'd stand up, cross my arms and withdraw attention. No words, no eye contact, just silence. Just for a few seconds and then I'd give her another chance to play nicely, with lots of vocal praise while she was doing so. If you try this and you're not flexible, you may find it easier to sit on a low stool while you play - the key is standing up immediately the puppy bites too hard. If it takes you a few seconds to get up, they'll lose that connection between behaviour and consequence. Willow was an easy puppy, though. She never bit my legs or my clothing. Then there's my boy, Shadow, who never bit once - we brought him home at 14 weeks. Then, Luna came along. My little whirling dervish. I'm not saying she was awful, because there are far worse pups, but she was far worse than Willow. The method I used before would have her biting my calves and jumping up to grab at any part of me she could reach. I tried the advice of stepping out of her pen, but that's easier said than done when you have a puppy's teeth embedded in your leg! So, I came up with a method of playing with her inside her crate. I'd pop her in and play with her through the open door. The second she bit hard, I'd close the door and ignore her for just a couple of seconds. It's far easier to pull your hand through a door of a crate than it is to step over a gate or partition. After that briefest of pauses, I'd start playing again. You have to be really careful that you're not associating the crate with a punishment, so it must be literally a couple of seconds of separation, and lots more time spent playing in the crate. But I found that she very quickly learnt, using this method, how hard was too hard, that biting resulted in the game ending, and she tempered her play biting outside of the crate, too - except when she was manic from being over-tired. I did a few sessions a day of a couple of minutes each time until she got the idea, which only took a couple of weeks. Now she almost never bites anymore.
I don't know if you're dealing with any arousal biting, but this was a big problem with Tank until he was 10 months old or so (we got him at 7 months and he hadn't had much bite inhibition training with humans). Yes, this is normal/natural, but in our case it was also emotional and kind-of scary! When he got over threshold he would jump at us and bite our arms and legs quite hard - we both had bruises and blood blisters covering our arms and legs! I actually found this forum because I was looking for help and joined (I never join forums) because I wanted to tell others that it gets better! For Tank, progress was slow, but he only had rare instances after 10ish months and really didn't do it at all after 12 months. Anyway the advice we received was to withdraw all attention immediately. As Boogie said, that is difficult when a 50 lb dog is biting you! At home, I would immediately withdraw my attention and, as calmly as possible, leave the room. Outside he always had to be on a lead so I could hold him away from me with a straight arm until he calmed down. We also started having him a short (1.5 ft or so) line around the house. If he started arousal biting we could hold him away from us and he got a time out. When he got a super consistent sit we could often redirect him by asking for a sit and he would calm down immediately. Then we would just speak calmly and slowly pet him to bring him below threshold. With biting during petting and calmer play we worked on bite inhibition. We allowed him to nibble at us if it didn't hurt at all, but removed all attention if it hurt. Redirecting towards a toy was also helpful! For us, consistency was essential. The most challenging part was getting my husband to ignore him instead of yelling or trying to push him away, which Tank thought upped the fun! Tank was kind of an extreme case, so we had to employ a LOT of strategies, very consistently for a long time. It sounds like that is not your experience right now, so the combo of redirecting and ignoring will likely do the trick!
