Dog Obedience Training Secrets - Play Biting

Is your dog nipping you? Is she playfully biting your hands and clothes while she tries to get you to play with her?

This is perfectly natural for dog of all ages. They use their mouths like we use our eyes - to explore the world.

But don't confuse your dog's nipping with true aggression because it is very different. Nipping is a way for your dog to play, explore, interact and communicate.

It is natural for puppies to explore their new world with their mouths. From their brother and sisters to their mother they use their mouth to interact and communicate. Nipping at one another is the natural form of puppy play.

When you find an older dog who nips it is usually because their owner encourages them by playing rough. Older dogs can also have these tendencies if they were separated from their litter at too young of an age.

Bite inhibition is very important for young puppies to learn and it is through nipping that they learn this.

It is through audio cues followed by immediate isolation that puppies learn bite inhibition. If one puppy bites another too hard then the bitten puppy will yelp loudly and stop playing immediately. This is the natural way puppies learn.

In the same way a puppy learns what it feels like to be bitten too hard. That is why when a puppy is removed from their litter too early they sometimes haven't learned many of the lessons that come from play nipping with their brothers and sisters.

Even for dogs who have learned about bite inhibition naturally there is still some adjustments that will need to be made when entering a new home for the first time. People are not as tolerant with small biting like dogs are so a dog will need to refine their biting inhibition understanding to suite their new human family.

Without good bite inhibition a small and harmless play session can easily escalate into a struggle that can lead to injury.

Older dogs need good bite inhibition otherwise the strength in their jaws can easily injure a hand in no time flat. Puppies on the other hand really don't have the strength to you.

So lets get to what you need to do to teach your puppy good bite inhibition. Use this same technique for older dogs as well just be a little more patient with it since it might take a bit longer for you to see results.

The first thing need to decide is what level of mouth contact are you ok with. Some people will not tolerate any contact with their dog's mouth while others are perfectly fine with light contact as long as their is no actual biting.

What ever level you choose here is what to do when your dog goes past your limit: Immediately make a painful sound with your mouth that gets your dogs attention... ...and then quickly turn away from your dog, showing him you back.

Continue to ignore him completely and now get up and move away to a new place a short distance away from him.

Basically you want to teach the dog the lesson through the audible cues and social isolation that occurs immediately after the action. The dog should feel instantly ignored right after the incident - long enough for them to make a connection between their action and the outcome. Make sure that the dog doesn't become distracted by playing with another person or thing since then the lesson will not be learned.

In some dogs there is a need to always chew something when they play or they interact with another person.

In these cases use another type of chew toy to entice the dog away from your hand and fingers.

Squeaky toys, raw-hides and rope toys are good options for your dog.

If your dog still becomes too aggressive with his biting while playing with the toys then immediately yell something like "Stop!" to get his attention. The goal is to shock him into attention.

Once he stops biting - which should be immediately - then deliver enthusiastic praise on him and then let him continue to play with his chew toy again.

Then praise him again once he start to play with his chew toy. So to summarize - You want to stop him in his "biting" tracks and then deliver praise to him once he does so. Once he begins to play with his appropriate chew toy praise him again. This will in time change his behavior completely.

There is never any reason to ever use physical force to change your dogs nipping behavior and in fact this will most likely only cause your dog to increase his biting towards you.

You'll be amazed at how effective this technique is to adjust your dogs biting behavior fast.

Your dog only wants to please you and be close to you. When he realizes that certain behaviors only cause more isolation from you he will immediately alter his behavior.

Now if you find that your dog continues to try to bite you after several attempts using the above method then its time to make his isolation a bit more extreme.

Separate him from the environment and let him "take 5' to calm down.

After five minutes or so you can bring him back into the environment and even start to play with him but now play at a lower energy level to start out to make sure that he doesn't ramp up into his biting behavior again.

For the really high energy breeds that quickly become over excited you will want to try to find as many non-contact play options as possible.

Lots of dog owners find that playing frisbee and fetch offer high energy play without any physical contact at all.

Things to avoid: Play slapping the dogs face with open hands Full contact wrestling with the dog

Both of these games trigger the dogs instinctual behavior and will almost certainly lead to more aggressive biting in the future.

Remember try to keep the games "low energy" and friendly.

If you find you need additional information and even more detailed step-by-step approaches by top dog obedience trainers then you might want to check out this web site: [http://www.thesecretsofdogtrainers.com/].

Shane Keller writes for [http://www.thesecretsofdogtrainers.com/] and currently lives with his pug/chihuahua Sophia, his black tabby cat Josiah as well as his wife and two kids. He has a passion for animals and movies and wants to help educate people in all aspects of their lives.

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