The Puppy Woes: Nipping and Biting
Having a puppy is a wonderful, exciting experience. But one of the things that many forget and many seem to forget to document is that having a puppy is a lot of work and does come with its woes. Today I want to talk about nipping and biting.
Our golden retriever puppy Kona is a good girl. She’s very sweet, carries the newspapers, is house trained (for the most part) and plays well with her toys. But she has one big issue that is causing us the puppy woes: she nips and bites at us on walks. Puppy nipping and biting is becoming a huge problem because she will jump up and bite my shirt. Quite often when I am walking her in the morning and have on nice clothes for a meeting, she will jump up and bite my shirt. I now have 3 go
od shirts thatI wear regularly with puppy teeth holes in them.
Another puppy woe comes with my jeans. Whenever I wear jeans, she jumps up and bites at my crotch or tries and bites my jeans. I now have several little puppy holes in 2 good pairs of jeans.
This is a difficult situation for us because normally when she bites we can say “Ouch” and act hurt and turn away. This has been a very effective method with her and now she hardly ever bites down on us when we are playing in the house. However, when we are on walks it is a different story. When we are on walks, she jumps up and bites and her teeth get caught on the thread of my clothing. If I turn away too fast, this just causes my clothing to rip more.
We are really at a loss at what to do here. I don’t want to have to wear certain clothes to walk her and she is smart enough to learn that she shouldn’t be acting this way. We need help in teaching her that this type of puppy nipping and biting is wrong and unacceptable behavior. Any insight would be much appreciated.
I am thinking about carrying a spray bottle on walks but realize that might be overkill.
Any thoughts? I look forward to getting your feedback.
Lindsay
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