3 Month Old Puppy Won’t Stop Biting

[butch79]

Hi everyone! I have a 13 week old mutt that has had issues with biting since day 1. We’ve gotten her biting tendencies curbed for the most part, as she now just mouths/nibbles at fingers instead of biting as hard as she can. The only thing she struggles with is going for the chin as hard as she can. However the problem now is that she knows she can’t bite flesh without getting scolded, so she’s trying to pull hair and bite the cats. We have gotten her a lot of different types of chew toys and chews, but she always comes back to bite living creatures. I don’t know if this is aggression but we’ve tried literally every type of reinforcement and she won’t stop. Like it actually feels like her goal is to hurt something sometimes, and I’m so frustrated.

Her exercise is good, like we play fetch all day and always walk around when we got outside, but sometimes she’d rather be inside chasing the cats and will flat out refuse to go on a walk. It really sucks because walking her and tiring her out really helps her biting, but it’s like dragging dead weight down the road.

Any advice would be appreciated, I really want to make getting rid of her the last option.

 

[drhoney]

@butch79 It’s probably partly puppy teething (and maybe being aggressive.) So this actually is a really controversial topic, so here’s a quick explanation. Some people say to try to yelp and act like they really hurt you when she tries to do that, so you can try that. However, I tried that with my dog, and I’m pretty sure he thought I was a squeaky toy, so that didn’t work out for me.

That best thing that has worked out for me in this case is by basically ignoring my puppy. Just try completely ignoring her. I’ll just walk into another room or if that’s not possible maybe go out of reach from her. I’d do this just for like a minute and then reentering and rewarding calm behavior. This hopefully will teach her (especially if she really like attention) that when she’s doing that, it completely stops. Or try giving her treats and then when she starts doing unwanted behavior, stop the treats until she’s calm again. Hope this helped!

 

[aokj]

@drhoney I’m in a similar boat and I’ve found a combination of ignoring and leaving the room has helped. We’re not done with teething but I’m not worried about mouthiness long-term. My husband takes a different approach and our puppy considers him to be a chew toy, but I’m also pretty sure he’s the “fun parent” anyway.

 

[gordon1234]

@butch79 How much is she sleeping? Puppies don't need to play or walk around all day - they need to SLEEP. About 18-20 hours a day.

When she bites, redirect and reward. Or reverse time-out (over and over), which is what worked for me.

Puppy months 3-4 are rough (as are many other months before your dog finally arrives on scene), but the biting/teething phase will pass. At 6 months, my guy's adult teeth were all in and the biting stopped.

...and maybe keep her away from the cats for the next little while, for their sake.

 

[butch79]

@gordon1234 Yes, I have noticed she stays awake all day, she doesn’t nap like my previous dog did when he was a puppy. Is there a way I could encourage her to sleep? I’ve noticed that she tries to stay awake as long as I’m awake, but I can’t really nap for 18 hours a day unfortunately lol.

We’ve been trying reverse time-out or walking away while saying “no bite” but she takes that as an initiative to chase and bite at ankles.