Puppy Season!

Feb 28 2022 | By: Kim Yanick Portraits

It’s puppy season!! I have to admit, I have a little bit of puppy fever myself.

 But with 3 senior dogs, 2 with special needs, now is not the time to add a puppy.

With all the new puppies in my community, I’ve been busy putting together strategies to help with common puppy challenges.
I get the most questions around puppy biting. Puppies bite and they bite a lot. This can be extremely challenging and difficult for families.
It’s important to teach puppies to be calm for petting and handling, but also meet their need and natural desire to use their mouths to explore their environment.
Redirecting puppy biting to an appropriate object is an important part of raising them so they have a healthy outlet for natural expression of chewing.
I highly recommend mealtime enrichment that involves chewing, licking and working for meals to help with this.
But we also want to teach our puppies that humans are oh sooooo sensitive and they have to be careful with their mouths or they will hurt us…and then we won’t play with them.
This exercise teaches your puppy to understand the concept and word, “gentle.”
Grab some yummy, spreadable things like peanut butter, honey or cream cheese and sit down with your puppy.
Set these sessions up when there’s very little distractions so your puppy can focus on you and the lesson.
  • Step One: Take a small amount (around a teaspoon) of one of the yummies you grabbed and put it on your fingers or the back of your hand.
  • Step Two: Calmly say “gentle” and present your hand to your puppy.
  • Step Three: Repeat this exercise on different parts of your hands to continue to teach your puppy to be gentle.
If they starts licking you can repeat “Gentle” again very calmly as to not get your puppy worked up.
If your puppy bites or nips you, say “Ouch” calmly and stand up.
Stop the session for about a minute to teach your puppy that if they bite too hard, they lose the opportunity for yummies.
After a minute try again. If your puppy is gentle they continue to get rewarded with the yummies.
 

You can practice this once or twice a day and keep going consistently until you see improvement and have several sessions without a bite.

 

 

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