Puppy questions.

[broccolini]

As expected, our puppy likes to grab everything with her mouth, including us. My dog training book says that up until 18 weeks we should allow this so we can teach bite inhibition. Once she learns that, we can work on not biting people at all. She already has a pretty soft bite; I think our breeder's other dogs did a pretty good job teaching her that. Does that sound like a reasonable plan or is there some breed specific reason to do something different?

Also, she loves to be outside. After she goes to the bathroom, I let her off leash to run around the yard. After playing with her for awhile, I'll go in and she will just lay in the grass or chase invisible things. The yard is secure and I check on her a lot. Usually, I'll go get her or she'll come to the door after about 15 minutes. Is is okay for us to do that at her age?

Today, we worked on 'leave it' and she picked up the concept in about two seconds. Tomorrow I'm going to teach her to drive a car.

 

[ruthcatrin]

I've always operated on the theory that if I don't want them to do it as an adult then I don't let them do it as a pup. And that includes nipping and biting. Regardless of the breed. And it was a hard slog with Apollo. I'm not sure why, cause as you're learning they pick up things really quickly, but for some reason "grabbing mom's hand or leg with my mouth isn't appropriate regardless of how hyped I am" was an incredibly hard concept for him. Soft bite wasn't and isn't an issue, he had that down, but we didn't want that as a default response period and so worked on that from day one. His breeder said the same, don't let him bite/nip, teach him from day one he's not allowed.

 

[Mooshi's Mummy]

Im with Ruth on the bite thing, we dont allow teeth on skin at all, not ever. As for picking things up quickly, TM's are super clever, its scary sometimes how smart these dogs are. As for laying outside, Moo would be out all day and night if I let her.

 

[broccolini]

Ok, we'll go with the no biting at all. She's really not bad about it and never bites hard so hopefully she'll get the point quickly. Did you just do the yelp and ignore when they bite?

 

[Mooshi's Mummy]

Yelp and give appropriate item to chew on.

 

[ruthcatrin]

Yelp and redirect. Also Apollo reacted "well" to yelp and ignore. He'd bite, we'd yelp, and then get up and leave him behind. He hated that and in the end that appeared to work the best with him.

 

[Mooshi's Mummy]

Yelp and redirect. Also Apollo reacted "well" to yelp and ignore. He'd bite, we'd yelp, and then get up and leave him behind. He hated that and in the end that appeared to work the best with him.

Moo didnt care if she was with you or not. LOL. She still doesnt really.

 

[ruthcatrin]

I can believe that, I didn't expect it to work, but yelp and redirect wasn't getting the response we wanted....but he HATES having us out of his view. He doesn't have to be at our feet all the time by any stretch, but he has to know where we are and if we'd get up and leave him for our bedroom (which he's not allowed in), even for a few minutes it was much more effective with him.