Biting....

I agree that redirecting is key. Throwing a toy is a great way to get them off you.

This is not just about teething. I'm sure you are getting your ankles nipped as well. If so this is also herding instinct.

I tried the yelping thing with Bacca. Didn't work. What did work was getting another Sheltie! :smile2: They herded each other.

Ultimately they do generally grow out of the nipping by 12 months.
 
BarbV said:
I agree that redirecting is key. Throwing a toy is a great way to get them off you.

This is not just about teething. I'm sure you are getting your ankles nipped as well. If so this is also herding instinct.

I tried the yelping thing with Bacca. Didn't work. What did work was getting another Sheltie! :smile2: They herded each other.

Ultimately they do generally grow out of the nipping by 12 months.
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Becca sound similar to Joe. He ripped a hole in my $80 track shoes the other day, and yelping did nothing to stop him:rolleyes2:.
 
Lad does not bite at my heels at all, in fact, when he walks down the hall with me, he stays by my side, he has never given those little jumps and nips when I walk by, etc. I guess I am lucky in that aspect. He sure likes to bite other times however.
 
Margi said:
My latest find was putting a cheap plastic shiny silver necklace in an empty Lipton Ice tea 16 ounce bottle (label cut off of course, lid on tight). It skitters around on the tile, makes lots of noise, he can really bite down hard and it crinkles when he bites it. My hubby says "So let me get this straight, you spent 50 bucks on toys when you could have just given him an empty bottle?" :lol:
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My pup sadly has always had plastic bottles since he was about 9 weeks old. :yes:. He loves to bat them around and carry them. Weirdo. Also, I found another toy that is made to be soaked in water, frozen and given to them. This one was at PetSmart and pretty reasonable. Just in case people were hunting
 
My dog likes plastic bottles as well. Some times I take a 1 gallon water bottle and put some treats in it. It's noisy, but a very cheap treat dispensing toy!

I have to agree with all the advice so far. Redirecting, screaming "ouch" and stopping play time when my dog was teething is what helped her learn. I know when you stop play time and walk away they look all sad, but you gotta do it if you want to them understand that nipping is now allowed.

I used to freeze baby carrots and damp washcloths. That helped a little with the pain.
 
Yep, lots of great advice here.

We also tried the yelping when our pup bit, but like some others have noted, that didn't really work for us. Just seemed to ramp him up even more. However, yelping and then immediately walking away from the dog and ignoring him, that sent a clear message that the behavior was not acceptable. It is heartbreaking to see their sad little faces when you suddenly stop a play session, but you really do have to persist, otherwise they will just continue to gnaw on you.

We also made sure to only interact with him with toys in our hands when he was a puppy, so that whenever he got bitey, we could easily redirect the biting to the toy, and not us. Eventually, he just grew out of it, as others have noted. Now he will "mouth" us when we are playing with him without a toy... but he never, ever bites down at all. Just shoves his alligator jaws around our wrist. :)

http://www.amazon.com/Puppy-Teething-Stick-Small-Colors/dp/B0009YL2UY

This is one of the teething toys we got for Lerwick, and it was definitely his favorite. We put peanut butter between the ridges, and he would much rather go after this than us. He lost several baby teeth on this toy. Whenever he had a stubborn tooth that refused to budge (he had a couple where the adult tooth was coming in and the baby tooth hadn't fallen out yet), we'd break this badboy out, and that tooth would be history.

Good luck! Here's hoping your pup passes through this phase quickly, it is definitely no fun.
 
My puppy Artemis is the same way only he's starting early and won't stop biting me at only 9 weeks old. We've bought him every kind of chew toy and safe bone imaginable, even got the ones that you freeze/refrigerate to ease their pain. I feel bad that he's teething but god he bites me more than my husband or anyone else around him! I've tried the firm "no", yelping and saying "ow" and turning away from him, "leave it", "drop it", because he also likes to chew on the carpet for some reason haha, but he just doesn't listen to me. He's such a little terror during the day, even when he's biting his toy and i'm playing with him, he'll drop it and bite me. I really don't know what to do with him because if he's this way at 9 weeks old I can only imagine a year of this. If anyone has any new ways to stop them from biting please let me know lol.
 
We gave all of our puppies plastic milk cartons and drink bottles. But we had to watch them once their chewing skills were stronger because they could end up swallowing some of the plastic. They also have plush toys with bottles inside of them that might be safer when you can't monitor them.

Every time they started to bite us, we would shove a toy in their mouth instead. Just always have a toy in your hand, if possible, and that keeps the biting to a minimum. There are freezable teething toys you can find at Petsmart and Amazon. They seemed to help soothe their gums the most. Ice cubes also help. But any toy usually got their attention for at least a little while.
 
daisysparky said:
Every time they started to bite us, we would shove a toy in their mouth instead. Just always have a toy in your hand, if possible, and that keeps the biting to a minimum.
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That's what I did too. Tully had a really hard time with teething so I kept lots of cold face washers handy - the cold was good to help ease the gums. Deska had a lot of rawhide chews and bones. And he also used to walk around with his treat bottle.

Karen Pryor recommends 'being a tree' rather than squealing in response to nipping. http://www.clickertraining.com/node/3249
 
I got a very large rawhide bone for Laddie last week, that little shaver has already eaten the top of it off, man, his teeth are sharp, he is really the chewer.
 
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