D E S P E R A T E for help? Or am I impatient?

[mac64]

I have my boy, Chip, who is just about 12 weeks (maybe 13) old. He's an Elkhound/Daschund/Beagle mix, which is a fancy way of saying that he's a biting demon. There is no exorcism that I feel would help him. He bites with the force of a thousand suns.

I'm an experienced dog owner, but I guess it means nothing when I was a kid growing up with 12+ dogs, trained all of them (extensively). He's my first pup as an adult. He's got floppy ears, long legs and one of them is currently resting on my arm as I type this. He's asleep, finally, but it's his 2nd to last sleep of the day because once it hits 11:15PM, he's up and destroying things until 1AM, when I get to sleep for MAYBE three hours. Puppy stuff.

He knows some basic commands (Sit, down, stay, "up" from a down position, shake) and is getting better at potty training. Crate training is another story for later.

However, his biting is getting worse. His usual teething (under the couch, coffee tables, etc) is different and I know that's natural, but holy shit. This is NOT nipping. I just spent 30 minutes just standing in my kitchen, trying to turn my back on a jumpy, puppy-teethed demon.

I have bite marks (broken skin included) and bruises on my hands, arms, legs, my ass (specifically the left cheek), the fatty part that sits just above my knees, my ankles, the soft parts of my feet, my unsightly side rolls (I'm losing weight, ok) and every once in a while he goes for my face.

I've tried yelping, I've tried distracting him with toys, I've bonked him (single finger, no force) on the snout a few times but nothing seems to be working, and if anything, I feel like he's gotten way worse.

Every article and post I've read seems to be having me running in circles as nothing is actually working. At all. I've hit a bit of puppy blues (Read: depression) about him but I really do love him. I'm just afraid I'm dealing with something more than just puppy behavior.

Am I freaking out over nothing? Or do I have an actual aggressive dog on my hands?

Also, any advice to get him to stop shredding his puppy pads like Donald Trump's legal team would be greaaat.

 

[harpazo417]

@mac64 Enforced naps. A structured scheduled where you know how much sleep he’s getting, and where you know when he should be getting tired so you can put him to bed before the demonic behaviour starts (and most importantly, so he doesn’t keep rehearsing it). it sounds like he’s overaroused/overstimulated/overwhelmed/overtired/over everything haha. Is this more likely to happen at the end of a walk (or even beginning! he’s extremely young at 13 weeks so it’s easy to get overstimulated), after being awake for a long time, after playing, after eating, after pooping? If you aren’t doing enforced naps already I would highly recommend it. And also yelping (high pitch), introducing an exciting toy or poking him will excite him more, making his biting inhibition decrease. You can instead immediately end play/interaction and go into another room, removing your attention from him. This worked great for my puppy, who sounds like yours when he was 13 weeks haha. Our pup went months without biting at all and now he’s 8 months (deep into adolescence) and sometimes has these biting attacks usually during the evening if he’s tired and overstimulated from a big outing or something, doing the same methods seems to help. good luck!

 

[mac64]

@harpazo417 I cannot for the life of me get him to take a nap, but the walking into another room has worked GREAT.

Crate training is still underway (to help with said napping) but thank you!

 

[harpazo417]

@mac64 I feel you! My puppy had severe FOMO so wouldn’t sleep if he heard the tiniest noise! My tips would be, make sure they’ve gone potty, they had food, they’re tired (from playing, exercise and mental stimulation) before leaving them to sleep. Have a very quiet place where their crate is or bed is. You can put it in a separate room with a door you can close so it’s even less noisy. Covering crate with a blanket or lowering the lights so it’s dark and cozy definitely helped my puppy, and even white noise! We had a Spotify playlist play white noise on a speaker so he wouldn’t hear us outside, worked like a charm. he doesn’t need any of that to sleep anymore, but it helped when he was very little!

 

[inquirer2016]

@mac64 This is normal puppy biting, exacerbated by him being wildly overtired and you reacting to the biting in a way that makes him even more amped up. The most important thing will be to get him adequate sleep.

In addition to sleep, choose a cue word ("enough" or "game over" for example). Whenever he bites, say the cue word in a normal tone of voice and walk out of reach for a minute (longer is sometimes needed depending on the pup)- it's important that you leave rather than you moving him. Make it impossible for him to follow you- close a door, step up on something tall, keep him in a pen and step out of it, etc. Give tons of praise and treats whenever you see him chewing things that are approved chews (and make sure he has access to lots of these).

It won't be an instant fix but you'll see a noticeable decrease in several weeks if you do this consistently.

 

[tochioxoxo]

@inquirer2016 Yes this! “Enough” plus removing myself from the room to somewhere my pup can’t go is the only thing that works for my pup. Everything else just amped her up more. Now saying “enough” is usually enough to get her to stop.

When she was 10 weeks old the biting was sssssoooooo bad. So that week I trained this intentionally. We’d play, she’d chomp, I’d walk away for 30 secs or so. Rinse repeat about five or six reps and you could see the penny drop that it was her rough play that was causing me to leave. After a couple sessions I dropped in “enough” as the warning.

She’s now 13 weeks old and we’ve gone about 2 weeks with decreasing severity of biting. It’s not perfect and the biting continues but she hasn’t drawn blood in 2 weeks and my hands are healing. It’s not anything as crazy as it was at week 10.

I realize every dog is different. While mine isn’t a cuddle bug she likes to be close by all the time so leaving really worked.

Enforced naps are major too. For her any stimulation makes her mouthy - playing, pats, etc. So keeping stimulation low and making sure she’s well rested is key. I read somewhere a good description of stimulation - it’s like a balloon being blown up. In the morning after a good night’s rest it’s empty. Then all the stimulating events throughout the day add air to the balloon and naps let the balloon lose some air. Without the naps the balloon continues to fill until it pops. So we do 2 hours awake for things like training, play, walks or general day to day puttering then crate for two hours to nap. Other people on this sub do 1 up 2 down which didn’t quite work for me.

Impulse control training I think has contributed to the improvement as well. These skills seemed to have stacked to contribute to growing improvement.