Train Your Puppy Not to Bite

Video Transcript

"Hi! I’m Melanie McLeroy with Taurus Training for Expert Village and today we’re going to talk about puppies. Now it’s time to talk about mouthing. Puppies explore the worlds with their mouths. It’s completely normal behavior. It’s important not to completely punish mouthing, because puppies learn bite inhibition through playing with other puppies and from us. Bite inhibition will keep your puppy from really seriously biting later on if he’s hurt, frightened or startled and it teaches him proper social behavior. Now this is Barto and he is usually a pretty mouthy puppy when he’s not distracted by the squeaky toys on the desk. When Barto starts to mouth me, I am going to simply make a loud noise to startle him that sounds like a yelp ..… and then I’ll distract him and teach him what he can chew on. Good puppy. Now see puppies learn bite inhibition from each other, because when puppies are playing together, your puppy A and puppy B that mouthing over each other and biting and if one bits too hard the other yelps and the game is over. So that’s why that yelping noise is effective. If you find that it’s not working anymore especially if your puppy gets older the best thing for you to do is get up immediately walk out of the room, game is over and that’s the consequence for biting too hard. Another thing you can try especially with small children is spraying a little chewing deterrent on your hands so that you don’t taste good. Remember human flesh is pretty yummy. Keep in mind every time you correct you’re trying to interrupt behavior and then you want to teach your puppy what is appropriate behavior, so be sure to give him something else to chew on and keep the remote controls and eyeglasses off the coffee table."