Understanding Puppy Mouthing and how to Stop it

There is nothing quite like the feeling of a puppy sinking its teeth into your arm, hands, legs or feet.

Those sharp little milk teeth seem as if they have been specifically designed to pierce flesh and, funnily, they have!

The problem is, your puppy hasn’t learnt to distinguish between using its teeth to eat its meals and biting you, your family, friends, members of the public and anything else which takes his or her fancy.

It’s probably becoming clear to you that your puppy’s idea of fun and your idea of fun are two completely different things.

I’ve been helping owners of puppies who are struggling with mouthing and biting for many many Years and have seen first hand just how debilitating this behaviour can be when left unchecked.

From your children being scared to go near your puppy to guests stopping visiting. 

Arguments between you and your partner, anxiety to go home and much much more.

Mouthing and biting is not only extremely common but it’s also one of the worst puppy training problems to deal with for an owner.

Despite everything you’ve tried, your puppy goes from being cute and cuddling one moment to turning, in an instant, into a Tazmanian devil.

Grabbing and tugging on your clothes, your hands, your feet – in fact, anything that he or she can get a hold of.

If you’re reading this then one thing is for sure. What you’ve been trying so far hasn’t worked.

You’ve tried it all;

High pitched noises

Distraction techniques

Quiet time

Removing the puppy from the situation

Increasing the amount of sleep

Diverting the biting to a toy

I imagine you’ve also been told the common opinions and advice of well meaning but completely unqualified owners and trainers to;

Let them grow out of it

It’s because of teething

Reward the god, ignore the bad

It’s a puppy, what did you expect

I know, for a fact, that none of the above techniques are working for you..

I’m so certain that its not working because, if you’ve got a puppy that really enjoys using its teeth, nothing in the list above will give it the same adrenaline rush as grabbing hold of a person and seeing the reactions they give. Mouthing people is great fun for puppies.

In fact, you could almost liken the shouting and arm flailing that happens next to the behaviour of a prey item such as a rabbit.

Fast movements and playful puppies do not mix unless you know how to manage your puppies tendency to put teeth on skin or clothes.

Mouthing is no joke.

Luckily though, with the right approach, it’s very easily resolved and I’m shortly going to share the answers to puppy biting and mouthing with you so that you can resume your normal life, start enjoying your puppy and subsequently, get everything back to normal.

First though, I want to tell you exactly how you’ve ended up in this situation so that you realise it’s you and not your puppy that is the problem.

Now, I’m not like a normal trainer, I’m not blaming you, I actually  want to help you understand what has happened to end up in this situation and then we can look at how to get out of it.

So here’s the deal.

Puppies like to bite! They bite their mum, they bite their littermates,they bite bowls, they bite toys, they bite bedding, they bite almost everything and, inadvertently, without realising, you’ve taught your puppy that you should be bitten too.

Puppies enjoy biting, it’s what they are designed for. 

The other thing that when combined with a puppies natural desire to use it’s teeth is excitement.

In very much the same reason that two children playfighting often end up falling out or in tears when things get a bit too highly charged puppies, as their level of excitement rises, so does their mouthing frenzy.

The problem you have is that despite your very best attempts to get it right, you’ve not managed to explain to your puppy in a way that he or she understands that biting flesh and clothes is not ok and you’ve also, to date, not managed to encourage calmness from your puppy.

I do realise that your puppy does actually have calm times on some occasions, I bet they are the moments you enjoy most right? 

The issue is, at the moment, your puppy is being calm when it chooses to rather than when you ask for it.

I’ve raised and overseen the raising and training of literally thousands of puppies over the last nearly two decades and during this time I’ve studied the differences between owners who struggle with mouthing and those who don’t.

I’ve also recently taken on a Malinois puppy and a Dutch herder puppy with a view to teaching my clients how to avoid mouthing in the first place. The problem I encountered? 

Despite them being from a long line of Police dogs, literally bred to bite, neither of my puppies have mouthed me even once.

Why am I getting such different results? 

Q. Why do some owners never struggle with mouthing and yet others find mouthing such a horrible experience that they feel they have no choice but to return their puppy to the breeder?

1. Because of the way I/we raise them!

All puppies are capable of mouthing. The way in which they are raised, interacted with and managed will dictate if mouthing or biting becomes a problem with a puppy or not..

Without a doubt, overfamiliarity and a lack of social boundaries from very moment you welcome your puppy home are where things are going wrong for you currently.

More often than not, the reason you are struggling is due to the way in which you very first introduced your puppy to your home and then what you’ve been doing in the subsequent days, weeks or months.

When I first bring a new puppy into my life, I have a couple of things to tick off before I start doing anything else.

My first priority is to get my puppy to be comfortable alone so I can have a good nights sleep from day 1.

My second priority is to get some toilet training underway so my puppy knows where and where not to go to the toilet.

Only once I have got these two things sorted do I start focussing on getting my puppy attentive to me and begin the bonding process. 

I know, from my vast experience, that beginning the bonding process too soon, creating over familiarity and giving too much attention to a puppy too quickly literally creates mouthing problems.

I also know that, because you weren’t forewarned about this problem, that when you picked up your puppy he or she travelled back to your home most likely on somebody’s lap and then when you got home your puppy was adorned with fuss, treats and playtime. 

SInce then, every time you lay eyes on your puppy, especially first thing in the morning or when you come home you speak to him/her and give them a fuss.

You’ve unwittingly, because there is a general lack of correct guidance available, created a puppy who is overfamiliar, overconfident and wants to play with you constantly and now you’re the outcome, namely mouthing you and your family at every opportunity.

It’s time to get back in control, stop the mouthing, start focusing on the right things and ensure that you actually end up with the dog and owner relationship that helped you to decide to bring a dog into your life.

Solving mouthing, despite the struggles you’ve had so far, is actually really straightforward, you just need to know what to do, how to do it and when. 

This is where the second problem you are facing stands in your way. Not many people, as you’ve already found, know how to solve mouthing issues.

Luckily you’re in the right place.

We’ve helped, with our very simple and easy to use approach, thousands of puppy owners who are struggling with their puppies’ mouthing to get back on the right track.

When most owners and trainers are trying to teach conventional obedience which takes lots of time and rarely gives the desired results, we have realised that what you actually need is to develop the right characteristics in your puppy and it’s easier than ever.

If you can raise your puppy to be calm then by default, almost all common in the home puppy training problems cannot and will not occur.

Even the most high energy, boisterous and troublesome puppies are capable of being taught to be calm very quickly. 

Whilst I can help you just resolve your puppies’ mouthing issues, it’s important that you understand how, just in the same way that you are struggling with mouthing, there are many more problems you are likely to encounter.

I’d much prefer to help you avoid all of these problems too.

 We get you to focus on Three areas because, once you’ve achieved these, you don’t need anything else.

These areas of focus are;

Calm

Clean

Attentive

If you have a puppy which is calm, you can’t, by the very nature of it, struggle with mouthing, separation anxiety, unwanted barking and howling, jumping up etc

If you own a puppy which is clean, all of your toilet problems are gone for good

If you own a puppy which is attentive, no other obedience commands are required and no other outdoor related problems or issues can present themselves now or in the future.

Now what I’m about to present to you isn’t a fluke. In fact, it’s been tried and tested by so many brand new, first time and out of their depth Puppy owners that I believe it is the one stop solution to all puppy training problems.

Actually resolving your mouthing problems in itself is very simple and easy.

You won’t believe that you’ve been struggling for so long when we reveal the answer but, unless you work on the other parts too for just a total of Twenty minutes a day, you’re going to hit other problems down the line in other areas.

90% of Adult dog owners are struggling with aspects of their dogs’ behaviour which seriously detract from their quality of life and, as you’ve found, the typical advice just doesn’t work.

We want to ensure that you, as quickly as possible, get everything moving in the right direction so that you can get your life back to normal and actually begin to enjoy your puppy like you’d been imagining you would.