Puppy Biting - 063 Dog Leads

And part of the reason for this is they're starting to wean off their mother's milk so they can have solid food.

And they're also going through that bonding period which makes it a little bit easier to kind of build that relationship with the dog.

The downside of it is up to about 12 weeks and beyond is when puppies will learn from their litter mates what's proper behavior, how to be a puppy.

But for our purposes, they start to learn bite inhibition.

For clients that have an adult dog and they get a puppy, Adult dogs are very tolerant of puppies.

Just like adult humans, we don't yell at a child when they're crying or knock their bottle over or something like that.

But as they get older, our expectations are much higher and we expect them to act appropriately.

And eventually, Adult dogs, for example, you might see them start to snap or bark or growl at a puppy when they start to get, you know, it varies, but 16 weeks, six months, somewhere, anywhere in between there.

And it's basically them saying, okay, that's enough.

You're old enough.

You should know better.

Just like people with a six-year-old may say, well, you know how to pour milk.

You shouldn't have spilled it.

So it's your responsibility to clean it up.

So when I say I don't allow a puppy to put teeth on me ever, what I actually mean by that is every single time a dog puts teeth on me, whether it's a puppy or an older dog, I'm going to address that behavior.

So for example, when we had Puck, I've mentioned before he loved tug toys.

As we were playing, he would start to choke up on that tug toy until he started nipping her fingers.

So with an instance like that, play immediately stopped, dropped the toy until he calmed down a little bit.

The other option, once he started choking up on that and getting close to the fingers, I would just grab the other end of it And then I've got all that length.

He starts from the other side and starts working up.

But we want to keep in mind that puppies, they don't have the benefit of opposable thumbs.

So they use their mouths to explore the world.

They use their mouths to get attention.

So we want to teach them a more appropriate way to do it.

So, you know, Puck, for example, would come up and paw at us a little bit.