If you’ve recently brought a puppy into your family, you’re likely excited by your new addition. But you may be surprised to find that your puppy is biting a bit more than you’d like. Don’t worry: there are several ways of teaching your puppy that it’s not okay to bite.
Puppies are very impressionable at their young age, which means that you have a great opportunity to teach a puppy right from wrong, and these teachings will stay with the dog as he grows older.
Before you attempt to train your puppy not to bite, remember that it’s very natural for puppies to go through a biting phase in their early days. Still, here are a few simple guidelines for teaching your puppy to stop biting and to help him grow into a responsible dog.
To begin training your puppy not to bite, refrain from playing highly aggressive games such as wrestling and tug of war. Playing these games will only make your puppy associate biting as a positive behavior, so avoid these types of games whenever possible.
Puppies are young, and biting is actually an instinctive behavior for them, so they don’t yet realize that biting is wrong. Make sure your puppy understands that he shouldn’t bite by addressing him directly and clearly. Speak in a confident, assertive tone and your puppy will listen to you and understand you.
One very popular method of teaching a puppy not to bite is yelping in pain by saying “Ouch!” in a high-pitched voice whenever the puppy bites you. Although you might be exaggerating, the puppy doesn’t know the difference.
When you use this method, your cry of pain gets the puppy’s attention. At this point, you should turn away from the puppy and refuse to play for a little while. This will teach the puppy that biting causes you to stop playing, and he will realize that biting is bad.
These are just three of the many ways that you can train a puppy to stop biting. Whatever method you choose, don’t ever use physical harm as a way of training a dog. This can have dire consequences in the long run.
Check out more of this author’s work regarding topics like round vinyl tablecloths and plastic round tablecloths.