All puppies explore the world with their mouths and play quite roughly with their siblings. If you watch even adult dogs playing they will often take each others' heads in their mouths and grab at each other quite roughly with their teeth. So puppy mouthing is not aggressive behaviour but puppies need to learn early that human skin is fragile. One way of dealing with this is to squeal loudly when the puppy bites, then take your hand away. Another is to remove the puppy - time out and play stops whenever this happens. Frenetic biting can be a sign of a tired puppy and "time out" often leads quickly to a sleeping pup! More positively you can use TTouch mouth work to give your puppy a good experience of being handled around the mouth and to make him more aware of his mouth.
Site design and content
by Selladore © 20052006
No text or images from this site may be reproduced in any form, except for personal individual use, without
our permission. If you wish to use any part of this site please contact us.
Last updated January 2006
