This morning one of Snick’s "anipals" (that’s what the animals on Twitter call themselves), who also happens to be a Shiba puppy, asked:
@Snick_the_Dog what did your parents do to help you get over your nipping and teething phase?
This was not a question that Snickers or I could answer in 140 characters or less (not to mention that I was at work and Snickers doesn’t actually know how to type without my help). I knew I’d answered this question before, so I searched both blogs, but I couldn’t find it. Then I searched my GMail. Ah ha! Luckily for me, this blog entry pretty much wrote itself. 🙂
My response:
Shiba puppies are SO MOUTHY. More so even than most pups. Snickers drove me insane as a puppy. He played so rough with my daughter – practically chewing on her – that she almost started to hate him for awhile there. It was a bad scene. To make it worse, when we weren’t there for him to chew on, he chewed on the walls, the baby gates, his toy box, the furniture, etc…
Luckily, he didn’t bite ME much. When he did, I gently grabbed his muzzle or the scruff of his neck, gave him a little (very little) shake and told him no (very firmly). That didn’t work for my daughter though, because he didn’t respect her enough to listen to her correction. We had to come up with a way for an "equal" to stop him; he thought of her like a littermate, so our solution was for her to act like one! Whenever he bit her, she would YELP like a hurt puppy and then turn her back on him and ignore him for about 10 seconds. It worked like a charm. His puppy brain completely understood and he had totally stopped biting her in about a week.
Unfortunately, the teething was much harder to deal with. The only real solution – especially when we weren’t home – was to protect everything that we could and give him plenty of safe things to chew on. If he chewed up something important to us, that was our fault for leaving it where he could reach it. (The crate is your friend when you can’t be there to supervise.)
One good aspect about the chewing… it really calmed him down. I found LOTS of good things for him to chew on – bones, tendons, rawhide – and he would chew them like a baby uses a pacifier. Whenever he needed to calm down, he chewed! He still does actually. 🙂
Thanks for taking the time out and writing/posting about this. It’s good to get reinforcement on ways to deal with the mouthing. We have been looking for all sorts of advice on the mouthing and there’s been a big improvement. Did you ever use the time out sessions?
You’re welcome! I’m glad you’re getting lots of advice. Every dog is different, so different things work for different people/dogs.
I didn’t use time outs per se. Puppies are so “in the moment” and Snickers was soooo highly energetic, I didn’t think anything longer than about 10 or 15 seconds was going to mean anything to him. He would have just been bouncing around wondering why he was alone!
We ignored him instead. If we reprimanded him and he didn’t respond immediately, we turned our backs on him. After a few seconds, he would run around to try to get our attention. The hard part is NOT LAUGHING while you’re keeping from making eye contact. If you respond with anything other than a stone faced ignore, it becomes a game. It really worked well. It doesn’t take long for their puppy brains to figure out that being ignored is no fun and if they don’t do X they don’t get ignored.
As an adult, if he won’t calm down and listen to me, I put him in a down stay. Then I reward the down stay and THEN we go back to whatever we were trying to do.
I actually had pants I called “my Sushi pants”. Pants I wore at home only because Sushi loved to chew on them while I was wearing them! We were not consistent in stopping Sushi’s nipping/chewing behaviour. By 7 months, Sushi was still nipping. We’d had enough, so we enforced yelling OUCH!!!! like we really meant it, then calmly telling to “go in” (into the kitchen, that was where his crate was). He was give a quiet, calming timeout. No one could speak to him, touch him or even look at him. Not even our 2 cats were allowed in the room. After 5 mins., once Sushi had chilled out, he was allowed to come out again. Within 3 weeks, the nipping had completely stopped. It is important to reinforce the timeout in a calm, positive manner, not for the dog to see or feel it is punishent. Just time to chill, and then they are praised and rewarded for it.
Are you reading my mind??? I’m in the throes of the whole nipping, biting, chewing, and mouthy business of my shiba.
when i get a free moment, i’ll read it all again.. gotta go see what he’s up to now.. too quiet!
Bonnie – Further proof that Shibas will get away with anything and everything they can if you don’t put your foot down. 😉
MAURA!!!! I so wish I could see your new pupster in person. We may have to set you up with a blog so you can chronicle his life in photos online. 🙂
ooooooooooo.. sushi pants.. not a bad idea.. right now “Chunk” is just a jumping nipping happy boy. Not sure what his name will end up being but he’s such a chunky pup.. no, seriously.. it’s not fur.. It’s Chunk!
Jenna. LOL! I just know it’s really nice to pick him up and smell shiba puppy goodness.
Unfortunately the camera i have isn’t that great with action shots so.. when Chunk is gracious enough to pose, we get a picture.