What worked best for you to stop the biting?

[2withjesus]

Our girl is 10 months old, she isn’t very bad at all with her biting, but we are trying to cut it out entirely (if possible).

Currently, she isn’t a huge fan of her paws being played with and always tries to chew on us when we play with her paws - so I’m trying to do a 2-in-1 thing, where we are teaching her to shake, as well as deter the biting (when we shake).

For example, we say shake and she shakes, but she will normally follow the shake with a chewing of the hand (for added fun for herself). So, when she shakes without the biting I will treat her - but when she shakes and bites I’ll give her a bop on the nose and tell her no.

It definitely seems to be working, but I’m just curious what other methods you all may be using to stop a shark from sharking.

P.S. I know a lot of people on Reddit disagree with nose boops, but I don’t care about your opinions on that, so keep it to yourself.

 

[jeffc1983]

@2withjesus We stopped our German from biting by- when she begins biting we completely stop playing, say a firm “no” and get up and leave the room, ignore them, don’t look at them at all. This teaches them biting means end of playing/interacting. We didn’t start working on warming our dog up to having their paws touched until after we trained out the play biting. It didn’t take long to train this way because dogs respond really well to being ignored as a punishment because attention is all dogs crave and it sets very clear boundaries to them of what is acceptable and what isn’t.

 

[2withjesus]

@jeffc1983 That makes total sense - we will have to try that in general. I have just incorporated the paw part because we also want her to be comfortable with us playing with her paws (for trimming purposes), and it is a good trigger for her biting, so we thought it would be a good way to tackle both at once.

 

[jeffc1983]

@2withjesus Sometimes it works to tackle both at once but sometimes it doesn’t just because German Shepards are so smart and they could take it as a way to get away with biting lol

 

[mhcapa1]

@2withjesus Teaching bite inhibition is just as important as teaching them not to bite.

 

[southernbbn]

@2withjesus this is what worked for me:

When my girl would open her mouth to bite me, I would take my first two fingers together and GENTLY poke them down her throat, making her gag. BE GENTLE. You don’t want to hurt her, just to make it unpleasant enough that she stops doing it. Took my girl two days to catch on. She still jumps up (eight years later) but the mouthing and play biting stopped completely.