I wonder if I just had an epiphany? I have been trying to get Rockwell to understand that when he bites too hard on me, it hurts. You know - the play that dogs do, putting their mouth around your hand. I don't want him to learn that mouthing is necessarily bad - I would prefer he learned to have a very soft mouth on human skin. Just now he came over to see if I would play and my hand ended up in his mouth. When he put a little too much pressure on it, I said "OW!" And he responded by saying "ARF ARF ARF!" Really loudly. So I said "OW" even louder and it degenerated into a shouting match. Which was when I suddenly realized that "ow" sounds an awful lot like "bow wow!" Hmm. So now I have to think of another word that doesn't sound like barking. Not "ouch", that's for sure.
posted by JuliaR @ 4:06 p.m.
2 Comments:
A lot of people yelp like a dog who has been hurt. This is very effective for Huskies anyway. Puppies learn bite inhibition from each other and from other dogs, and they learn that a yelp means that they were too rough. The trick is to give a high pitched yelp, then pull away and ignore the dog for a few minutes. They should learn that when they are too rough people stop playing with them. Sometimes a time out helps too, that worked for me when I was a pup!
Here are some good articles that the rescue refers people to:
http://www.ddfl.org/behavior/pup-nip.pdf
http://www.aspca.org/site/PageServer?pagename=pets_mouthing
That sounded like such good advice Indy that I tried it last night while I was towelling Rockwell off after our last walk (in the rain). I yelped like a puppy when he got the towel with my hand in it between his teeth and he stopped dead and looked at me with a whole new look on his face! I tried it again this morning at play time however, and I'm not sure I sound much like a puppy - I'll have to work on my accent. But I'll check out those links, thanks.
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