Dog play biting at nearly two years old,please tell me your experiences!

[mmdave3]

Hello all

Our doggo is a 25kg Romanian rescue with the most amazing temperament and lovingness towards all humans and dogs. If anything that’s her biggest issue, she just gets two excited by both! We have always had issues to varying degrees with her arousal biting. The two big triggers for it where seeing other dogs and redirecting onto other dogs (we have completely solved this now, touch wood!) and being off lead in big open grassy spaces and it all being too much for her excited brain and her redirecting onto us (we just don’t do this anymore!).

At 8 months to I would say 14 months she was horrendous for it, I would say 8/10 bad. However over the past 6 months she is so much better. We haven’t had any play bites at all in 3 months or so and it’s going really well. However, she still can be a little mouthy, especially with long winter coats or scarfs or loose sleeves. We are obviously working on it all but I just wondered if there is anyone who has experienced similar with a dog nearing their 2 birthday? Please don’t make me feel bad that she is still mouthing at this age, I feel bad enough about it and we have been working really hard!

Thanks very much x

 

[dian11]

@mmdave3 Me and my partner recently adopted a pup who also has some mouthy tendencies and he is 2.5 according to his records. He knows he shouldn’t be which is good but he still has little moments where he gets too excited and is putting his mouth on our clothes or our hands. We have started the cold shoulder whenever he touches anything on us at all with his mouth and he’s starting to get the idea a little better. He usually will immediately know he messed up and follow up with a kiss instead lol. It takes time but then being older doesn’t mean they can’t learn!

 

[mmdave3]

Thank you, that’s really helpful!

 

[skyvrit]

@mmdave3 My dog is 2ish (he's adopted so I don't exactly know) and he's AWFUL with play biting. He is approximately 30% herding breeds, and he will walk behind you slamming his open mouth into your heels and grabbing your pants. We have really tried to work on it, but it has been so hard to fix. He lived in a hoarder house for a year before we got him so we think he basically got no socialization to humans, and was used to playing crazy with other dogs 24/7. But yes I definitely relate, it seems to be hard to solve!

 

[theylivewesleep]

@mmdave3 Currently working through something similar! The second is let off leash it is brain overload. We’ve started to keep small snacks in our pockets so when we see he’s over threshold we put one of the small snacks in our hands and it redirects him to stop and focus on the snack. At first we would just stand still and not react but we needed to take it one step further! Seems to be slowly working. When he is off leash we also give him a job to do- he loves to hunt his snacks in our yard. I’ll throw them randomly and he’ll go sniff them out which also redirects him from his silly behaviors!

 

[jahveh]

@mmdave3 Our previous dog was a land shark and I ended up spending quite a bit of time working on training that tendency. (Caveat - our dog had extensive behavioural issues aside from this but we were able to train the play biting).

- Play the "touch" game. Cue the word "Touch" and and whenever they touch your hand with their nose or face (NOT teeth) then reward them. Teaches them that they get rewarded for not putting their teeth on you

- Sit on floor with legs out in front of you. Have dog cross over your legs and you gently touch their side. Reward for not reacting with teeth. Keep repeating this for about 5 minutes at a time.

- Teach the "Gentle" command. Anytime they reach for something (i.e. treats) with their teeth only allow them to have it when taken gently.

I don't remember which YTs or trainers or websites i found these strategies on, but in combination they all ended up working and calming his land shark tendencies.

 

[mmdave3]

@jahveh That’s helpful, thank you! What age did they stop doing it?

 

[jahveh]

@mmdave3 He was a land shark out of the gate at 8 weeks. And I finally realized the level of it was out of the normal range when he was about 11 weeks. I doubled down on training this for about a month and it finally got under control. I wouldn’t sweat that your dog is still a little mouthy. Just keep at it and also redirection is a good thing too. You will get there!

 

[mmdave3]

@jahveh Thanks so much x