Post by oksaradt on Nov 22, 2007 21:14:27 GMT -5
I tend to lurk on lots of lists because many times when I speak freely I tend to tick someone off. I know many moderators very well from years of admonishments.
I debated with myself over discussing puppy training as sooo many have an almost religious belief in how it's supposed to go. Many breeders' are concerned with my taking a puppy so early as they feel they are the experts in puppy development and they have politically given themselves an out by stating they've signed a code of ethics. Considering many owners select their puppies with less regard than they do a lamp shade...."Oh, that one looks cute. Look he likes to chew on my pants."...... I can see that opinion.
With that, I was lurking on a list where an owner of a new puppy was shocked that the puppy went from cute and cuddly to this screaming furball with open exposed teeth directed at the owner.....and it was an airedale! A behaviorist was consulted, "well, yea, it's an airedale, they do that. It'll grow out of it." A list was consulted, "well, this is what happens when you take a puppy too soon, they become raving psycopaths. This is just not right. You must totally dominate the puppy by hand feeding it."
*sigh* *sad grin*
All puppies go through learning biting etiquette, but rarely do they go through it identically. Most breeders hope the dam and the littermates turn their bundle of joy into a creature that would never bite any human for any reason.......with hunting dogs with high prey drives......not going happen that quickly or easily.
Now, in the past, I had a wonderful canine babysitter. I can talk about him now. Worf passed away 2 months ago, an 78% wolfdog that I rescued at five weeks of age. He died of a bone tumor at 12 years of age. When I realized how easy a CGC is to get. I got a CGC on him. I took him to talks to demonstrate that mean dogs are created by idiotic owners and breeders that don't understand wolf/canine behavior rather than the genetics. Worf was a great puppy trainer and puppy sitter. Between Worf and I, the biting phase was fairly painless. The key isn't to teach a puppy it can't bite, but to teach the puppy how to use it's only grasping tool responsibly and acceptably. Why is this so important for a SAR dog? Because the SAR dog is often thrown into the public venue and must be the epitome of the civilized canine.
During this process, it's not uncommon for the puppy to become frustrated with learning the rules and like a child, it has a tantrum. It's better if you can deal with these tantrums in hard play with the puppy than in a confrontation. I had a stuffed toy ready for the next puppy. Murphy decimated it the first week to where stuffing was starting to come out. At that point, I replaced it with this great stuffed tiger with a sound device inside that roars when you squeeze or bite it just the right way. Many breeders pre-scent toys with the litter and send one home with the puppy to give it an artificial buddy to aid it on its transition with its new pack.....errrr home. When Murphy gets frustrated with me, the tiger comes out and he gets to redirect his frustration on the toy. He truly wuvs his toy, so much that I’m successfully using it to teach him to bark on command with it.
So, what do I do for teaching the puppy not to bite. I have the advantage of having (still) four other dogs to draw upon. Two are “fixer-uppers” that my wife, the vet, talked me into “fixing” and then wouldn’t let me find a home for. The other two are other Airedales. Over the past three weeks, I’ve been gradually introducing Murphy to my dogs and visa versa. Dax got to meet Murphy face to face at the testing then not again till two weeks later when we went up to Kansas to have another handler set up blind problems for us and to check out the new kid on the block. At that time, Murphy was just starting the bite phase. Dax didn’t hurt him, but rolled him, bared teeth into his eyes, and basically did her Clint Eastwood imitation of “Do you feel lucky?” …..Murphy came running to me. Both the fellow I was playing disc golf with and myself felt Murphy had it coming. As Dax is now officially on her second decade, I figured now would be a good time for her to let Muprhy know what she was capable of before he got too impossible for her to deal with. Dax is no babysitter, she works for a living.
Turns out the new puppy sitter has shown himself over the past couple of days. Shake (short for Shakespeare….no, I didn’t name him) is a 7 y/o pointer that’s shown himself to both be playful with Murphy, gentle, and not afraid to get mouthy with the puppy. Shake is teaching by example how to be gentle with his teeth. Watching them brought up memories of Worf with Dax when she was Murphy’s age. An obedience class watched the two of them play mouth. I was helping someone heel their dog when another handler psssst’d at me, “Jim, you better watch Worf and Dax.” Worf could pretty much wrap his mouth around Dax’s entire head, shoulders, and feet almost back to the rear hips. I look and Dax’s eyes are showing out from the molars and her tail is wagging furiously. The tail told me all I need to know and I said to leave them be, they were fine. Later on, when Dax and I were doing demo’s for 20,000+ kids at a Governor’s children gathering, I could put a wienie slice on an infants palm. Dax would put her entire mouth over his, drag her teeth back and lightly pull the wienie slice onto her tongue much to the infants shouts of glee. The mother’s eyes were very wide, but again their child told the whole story. A dog’s mouth is it’s only grasping instrument. We can teach them to use it to it’s fullest capability or we can leave it as a tearing tool and no more. In three days of playing mouth with Shake, Murphy’s playful biting of me has gone to gentle brushes.
I can growl “no bite” and that will stop as well.
So, what’s my part in all this training?
There are lots of favorite methods to getting a puppy to stop biting, oddly enough only a few of them really work once the uncivilized dog becomes an adult that was never shown not to mouth or bite humans. I use a combination of several techniques because (as I stated) no one magic theory covers all the circumstances. Now, the one my vet (wife) preaches is the Yip-Walk away method. (not to gloat, but Dax nipped her with this method for 2 months because Dax thought it was so cool to make the human squeak. Dax stopped nipping me after 10 days. Dax stopped nipping at the wife because I interceded.) This method states you act like a litter-mate in that if the puppy bites you, you yip in pain then walk away, demonstrating the puppy doesn’t get to play with you any more. It’s been my experience that most puppies’ attention spans are too short to make a coherent association with this drama. If I’m holding the puppy and it nips me, this can work as I can push it away and act devastated, but Murphy didn’t buy that more than once.
What the Dam does with the puppies is if they bite her too hard, she immediately nips them on the nose, forces the puppy to yip, releases the bite, and then licks the puppy to let it know it’s forgiven. Pinching an ear while growling does very good at this. If drama is warranted, I’ve been known to growl “NO BITE!”, quickly wrap the muzzle with my hands and poise teeth on the puppy’s nose, growl loudly, apply pressure while staring the puppy in the eyes, and release when it say’s uncle. Then I give its head a stroke to show no hard feelings.
Murphy has come to think that my pants are the greatest moving chew toy and will race up to grab them with his teeth. I’ll growl “hey hey, no bite!” once then a deft circle of the leg will launch young Murphy across the grass. Murphy usually thinks this is fun for one more flight then decides no more. If I was being cruel or unusual to the puppy, would he be racing back for more?........well, yea, he is a high drive terrier…*grin*….gotta love it.
For those trying this, most puppies will be convinced fairly quickly on biting etiquette, but “hard dogs” have to be shown many times. I prefer training a hard dog because once you convince them it sticks.
Next method that comes in useful is the muzzle wrap. The puppy has decided that your finger is just an appetizing moving round rawhide that he could just settle in to gnaw on…..ok, let him, and tuck his muzzle in between his teeth and your finger. This is much easier on Labs, but works just fine on Airedales as well. As/if the puppy bites up, you press his muzzle harder against his upper teeth. If the puppy relaxes, you relax. In Murphy’s case, he’ll whimper and open his mouth. I retrieve my finger and praise him.
And, it’s not surprising with all these techniques that the puppy becomes frustrated, you get fanatic growling and bared open mouth. My response is to laugh, hold him upside down in my arms and blow on his back feet. Often I’m rewarded with more growling, now with flailing. You can either let a kid win with the tantrum or you control the outcome. I’ve held an 80 lb Airedale in full tantrum upside down between my legs with his head between my boots. Odd thing about tantrums, like in judo, they wear the panicked one out fairly quickly. When they wear themselves out, you can suddenly exclaim, “what a good boy” and let them up.
If the handler is consistent with their responses, the puppy usually learns within 1-3 weeks that people aren’t good to bite. In play, dogs wrap their teeth around each other routinely. Two dogs posturing for status may appear to be biting each other’s heads off, but oddly there’s no blood. Usually if dogs really want to do damage to other dogs, they’ll go for the rear flanks, the belly, or behind the head.
I debated with myself over discussing puppy training as sooo many have an almost religious belief in how it's supposed to go. Many breeders' are concerned with my taking a puppy so early as they feel they are the experts in puppy development and they have politically given themselves an out by stating they've signed a code of ethics. Considering many owners select their puppies with less regard than they do a lamp shade...."Oh, that one looks cute. Look he likes to chew on my pants."...... I can see that opinion.
With that, I was lurking on a list where an owner of a new puppy was shocked that the puppy went from cute and cuddly to this screaming furball with open exposed teeth directed at the owner.....and it was an airedale! A behaviorist was consulted, "well, yea, it's an airedale, they do that. It'll grow out of it." A list was consulted, "well, this is what happens when you take a puppy too soon, they become raving psycopaths. This is just not right. You must totally dominate the puppy by hand feeding it."
*sigh* *sad grin*
All puppies go through learning biting etiquette, but rarely do they go through it identically. Most breeders hope the dam and the littermates turn their bundle of joy into a creature that would never bite any human for any reason.......with hunting dogs with high prey drives......not going happen that quickly or easily.
Now, in the past, I had a wonderful canine babysitter. I can talk about him now. Worf passed away 2 months ago, an 78% wolfdog that I rescued at five weeks of age. He died of a bone tumor at 12 years of age. When I realized how easy a CGC is to get. I got a CGC on him. I took him to talks to demonstrate that mean dogs are created by idiotic owners and breeders that don't understand wolf/canine behavior rather than the genetics. Worf was a great puppy trainer and puppy sitter. Between Worf and I, the biting phase was fairly painless. The key isn't to teach a puppy it can't bite, but to teach the puppy how to use it's only grasping tool responsibly and acceptably. Why is this so important for a SAR dog? Because the SAR dog is often thrown into the public venue and must be the epitome of the civilized canine.
During this process, it's not uncommon for the puppy to become frustrated with learning the rules and like a child, it has a tantrum. It's better if you can deal with these tantrums in hard play with the puppy than in a confrontation. I had a stuffed toy ready for the next puppy. Murphy decimated it the first week to where stuffing was starting to come out. At that point, I replaced it with this great stuffed tiger with a sound device inside that roars when you squeeze or bite it just the right way. Many breeders pre-scent toys with the litter and send one home with the puppy to give it an artificial buddy to aid it on its transition with its new pack.....errrr home. When Murphy gets frustrated with me, the tiger comes out and he gets to redirect his frustration on the toy. He truly wuvs his toy, so much that I’m successfully using it to teach him to bark on command with it.
So, what do I do for teaching the puppy not to bite. I have the advantage of having (still) four other dogs to draw upon. Two are “fixer-uppers” that my wife, the vet, talked me into “fixing” and then wouldn’t let me find a home for. The other two are other Airedales. Over the past three weeks, I’ve been gradually introducing Murphy to my dogs and visa versa. Dax got to meet Murphy face to face at the testing then not again till two weeks later when we went up to Kansas to have another handler set up blind problems for us and to check out the new kid on the block. At that time, Murphy was just starting the bite phase. Dax didn’t hurt him, but rolled him, bared teeth into his eyes, and basically did her Clint Eastwood imitation of “Do you feel lucky?” …..Murphy came running to me. Both the fellow I was playing disc golf with and myself felt Murphy had it coming. As Dax is now officially on her second decade, I figured now would be a good time for her to let Muprhy know what she was capable of before he got too impossible for her to deal with. Dax is no babysitter, she works for a living.
Turns out the new puppy sitter has shown himself over the past couple of days. Shake (short for Shakespeare….no, I didn’t name him) is a 7 y/o pointer that’s shown himself to both be playful with Murphy, gentle, and not afraid to get mouthy with the puppy. Shake is teaching by example how to be gentle with his teeth. Watching them brought up memories of Worf with Dax when she was Murphy’s age. An obedience class watched the two of them play mouth. I was helping someone heel their dog when another handler psssst’d at me, “Jim, you better watch Worf and Dax.” Worf could pretty much wrap his mouth around Dax’s entire head, shoulders, and feet almost back to the rear hips. I look and Dax’s eyes are showing out from the molars and her tail is wagging furiously. The tail told me all I need to know and I said to leave them be, they were fine. Later on, when Dax and I were doing demo’s for 20,000+ kids at a Governor’s children gathering, I could put a wienie slice on an infants palm. Dax would put her entire mouth over his, drag her teeth back and lightly pull the wienie slice onto her tongue much to the infants shouts of glee. The mother’s eyes were very wide, but again their child told the whole story. A dog’s mouth is it’s only grasping instrument. We can teach them to use it to it’s fullest capability or we can leave it as a tearing tool and no more. In three days of playing mouth with Shake, Murphy’s playful biting of me has gone to gentle brushes.
I can growl “no bite” and that will stop as well.
So, what’s my part in all this training?
There are lots of favorite methods to getting a puppy to stop biting, oddly enough only a few of them really work once the uncivilized dog becomes an adult that was never shown not to mouth or bite humans. I use a combination of several techniques because (as I stated) no one magic theory covers all the circumstances. Now, the one my vet (wife) preaches is the Yip-Walk away method. (not to gloat, but Dax nipped her with this method for 2 months because Dax thought it was so cool to make the human squeak. Dax stopped nipping me after 10 days. Dax stopped nipping at the wife because I interceded.) This method states you act like a litter-mate in that if the puppy bites you, you yip in pain then walk away, demonstrating the puppy doesn’t get to play with you any more. It’s been my experience that most puppies’ attention spans are too short to make a coherent association with this drama. If I’m holding the puppy and it nips me, this can work as I can push it away and act devastated, but Murphy didn’t buy that more than once.
What the Dam does with the puppies is if they bite her too hard, she immediately nips them on the nose, forces the puppy to yip, releases the bite, and then licks the puppy to let it know it’s forgiven. Pinching an ear while growling does very good at this. If drama is warranted, I’ve been known to growl “NO BITE!”, quickly wrap the muzzle with my hands and poise teeth on the puppy’s nose, growl loudly, apply pressure while staring the puppy in the eyes, and release when it say’s uncle. Then I give its head a stroke to show no hard feelings.
Murphy has come to think that my pants are the greatest moving chew toy and will race up to grab them with his teeth. I’ll growl “hey hey, no bite!” once then a deft circle of the leg will launch young Murphy across the grass. Murphy usually thinks this is fun for one more flight then decides no more. If I was being cruel or unusual to the puppy, would he be racing back for more?........well, yea, he is a high drive terrier…*grin*….gotta love it.
For those trying this, most puppies will be convinced fairly quickly on biting etiquette, but “hard dogs” have to be shown many times. I prefer training a hard dog because once you convince them it sticks.
Next method that comes in useful is the muzzle wrap. The puppy has decided that your finger is just an appetizing moving round rawhide that he could just settle in to gnaw on…..ok, let him, and tuck his muzzle in between his teeth and your finger. This is much easier on Labs, but works just fine on Airedales as well. As/if the puppy bites up, you press his muzzle harder against his upper teeth. If the puppy relaxes, you relax. In Murphy’s case, he’ll whimper and open his mouth. I retrieve my finger and praise him.
And, it’s not surprising with all these techniques that the puppy becomes frustrated, you get fanatic growling and bared open mouth. My response is to laugh, hold him upside down in my arms and blow on his back feet. Often I’m rewarded with more growling, now with flailing. You can either let a kid win with the tantrum or you control the outcome. I’ve held an 80 lb Airedale in full tantrum upside down between my legs with his head between my boots. Odd thing about tantrums, like in judo, they wear the panicked one out fairly quickly. When they wear themselves out, you can suddenly exclaim, “what a good boy” and let them up.
If the handler is consistent with their responses, the puppy usually learns within 1-3 weeks that people aren’t good to bite. In play, dogs wrap their teeth around each other routinely. Two dogs posturing for status may appear to be biting each other’s heads off, but oddly there’s no blood. Usually if dogs really want to do damage to other dogs, they’ll go for the rear flanks, the belly, or behind the head.