Aggressive puppy biting can be a concern but if you watch a litter of puppies playing you’ll probably notice that they can seem to be quite rough. Chewing ears, pouncing and biting each others paws is common. This is not aggressive puppy biting but rather them playing.
Your puppy is likely to display the same behaviour towards their new family. This means the surprisingly painful feeling of sharp puppy teeth for you unless you teach your new little pup otherwise.
As they grow in their first weeks the mother teaches the litter how to interact and what is acceptable behavior. You have likely gotten your puppy when it is around 8 weeks old. This time in the puppy’s life is really critical in teaching them appropriate behavior and now it is your turn to play “mum”, it’s time to get training.
It is very important to rid your puppy of this form of playing before it turns into more of an aggressive puppy biting issue. This can happen if the puppy begins to get its own way by using biting to do so.
Whilst this might not be a huge problem when your puppy is young, once those adult teeth come through and you dog is now big and strong this aggressive biting puppy behavior can obviously become a serious problem.
First thing is not to encourage such behavior. No “mouthing games” or ”tug of war” games is important.
To help with all your training your puppy has to trust and respect you. Your pup will not listen if he doesn’t trust you and will definitely not do what you say if it doesn’t respect you.
As with children, you don’t always give them their own way, if you do there is likely to be a lack of respect. It is the same with puppies.
A puppy that shows a bad behavior and still receives attention will never learn right from wrong. This doesn’t mean that you should bully the dog physically or yelling at it, just ignore bad behavior and reward positive behavior.
Remember, your puppy believes that it’s only playing and communicating with you so try to refrain from yelling at your puppy (as they are not always going to understand).
Instead, letting the puppy know that what your doing is hurting you is usually an effective way to combat aggressive puppy biting. You can do this by giving a “Yelp!” when the puppy’s teeth make contact with you then back away from the puppy and stop playing.
Your puppy doesn’t wish to hurt you and giving the pup this impression will make it stop especially if it also thinks you don’t want to play anymore.
After a few minutes return to the puppy and if the puppy reacts with gentler forms of communication, such as licking, then reward the pup with praise and treats. Continually doing this when your puppy is young will most likely eliminate this behavior.
Socializing your puppy is a must. Without this your puppy will lack the confidence and ability to interact well with other dogs. In many circumstances the adult dogs that bite do so out of fear, mainly due to being uncomfortable around other animals.
Through puppy classes, further obedience and simply taking your dog to the park your puppy will grow to be comfortable and happy to play with other dogs.
There’s a big difference between a small puppy play biting and a bite from a fully grown dog, but ignoring the problem of aggressive puppy biting can unfortunately lead to this.
