04 JunEpisode 10 | A modern dog owner’s guide to nipping
Nipping is something that tends to drive new puppy owners batty, for two reasons. Firstly, no one likes to be chewed on; secondly, there are just too many conflicting opinions out there on how to deal with it. A lot of the advice you’ll find on the Internet suggests scolding a pup for nipping; usually people are told they should use a high pitched voice (as if to emulate another puppy) or to berate the dog in the deepest voice possible. Here is a guide to understanding how to deal with nipping in a sensible way.
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Make sure to see our blog post on puppy nipping here.
Annie:
So my job involves hanging out with a lot of puppies, which I gotta say is pretty awesome, but one downside of hanging with puppies is nipping. Nipping is a totally normal thing that puppies do. But if you follow my advice here, I think you're going to get a puppy that is a lot less nippy than your average dog.
And I also always like to point out to puppy owners who are frustrated with their dog nipping that things do get better on their own. I think even without a lot of concerted training, most puppies tend to figure out how to use their mouths appropriately on their own, so that's good news. That's not to say that there aren't adult dogs who do not use their mouth well, but I would say the majority of them of adult dogs, I know, especially, those who have gone through any kind of puppy classes tend to figure out what is and isn't okay as far as where they should be chomping down those teeth.
And a big part of that, part of the reason why I say a lot of the puppies I think who go through any kind of puppy play or puppy kindergarten program, the way they figured this out on their own is through each other. I'll talk a little bit more about that in a moment.
If you have a nippy dog, I think the first thing you need to think about is where you're putting your hands. Our hands move around. They have lots of smells on them and they are often in and around a puppy's face. I can't tell you how many times I've been sitting with a client who's complaining about how their puppy keeps chewing on their fingers and I looked down and the person's hands are in the dog's face. Well, if your hands are… if you're choosing to put your hands in your dog's face, then you have to expect you might be nipped on a little bit.
And nipping is how they're learning about the world, right? They don't have hands, they don't ask questions they can ask verbally. Does this fit in my mouth and what does it feel like in my mouth? That's how they are exploring the world they live in.
I think the most important thing to focus on with a nippy dog is how can you help them use their mouth appropriately. How can you let them put things in their mouth that are supposed to go in their mouth and focusing on that I think will get you a lot farther than focusing on how to punish them when they do bite on you, in any way.
The reason for that is, first of all, as with all training, I would rather not have to think too much about how I'm gonna punish a behavior. Not because punishment is necessarily a big, bad, dirty thing, but because in order to punish a behavior, I have to have that behavior happening in the first place, right? And if I can keep it from happening at all, that seems like a better solution to me, generally speaking. Because once the dog has nipped, nipping has been reinforced, it feels good. They're doing it because they enjoy it and chances are we're only going to further reinforce it by doing something like yelling at them. Why? I tend to think if your dog is chomping down on you and you go, OW, your dog thinks, “Oh my, I have turned my human into a squeaky toy. Isn't this an awesome game?” Right? And I say, OW because that's often what you read online. That's a lot of people's advice on how to deal with…, that's a lot of, the internet advice on how to deal with nipping is to make like your puppy, make a high pitch noise and that'll teach your dog to leave you alone.
In my experience, it doesn't work. And you can tell whether or not it works, if it keeps happening or not. If a behavior is successfully punished, it should be discouraged quickly to the point of not happening anymore. If you're having to do it again and again, that means you were probably inadvertently reinforcing the behavior. Now, dogs do respond to tone. So if you decide instead to make angry, you know, NO, I think your dog probably still thinks you're a squeaky toy, just a different kind of squeaky toy.
Let's say you do actually punish your dog by doing that and your dog was scared by your scary sounding deep voice, NO. That brings us to another problem with punishment, which is that I don't want the puppy to make the wrong association. I don't want him to think playing with my person is bad because I get yelled at in this scary way. Right? They might not realize that the nipping is the thing he or she is being punished for.
Also, again, we're punishing this very natural thing they're doing, right? This is not some, like, super intelligent, clever thing that they figured out how to do that we're telling them they should not do anymore and need to find another hobby. No, right, they're puppies, they're going to bite things. So,those are some reasons why I would rather focus on how to not have the behavior start then to worry about what you're going to do when it's happening. Also with this approach, you don't get bit very much.
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Now, I know that there is some bad advice that a lot of people read on the internet on this topic, but let me be clear, there was a lot of bad advice on this topic long before the internet existed. I have an area on my bookshelf that is just for really bad old dog training books that I keep around simply for a laugh. One of them is Barbara Woodhouse's Dog Training My Way and in it, let's see, what's some of the advice she gives? Page 28 of this gym. “Give the puppy plenty to play with.” So far so good. “But as soon as he touches something, he mustn't the firm command and the words, “NO Naughty” must come in. Take the object away and then offer it to him again. If he goes to take it, scold him severely and give him the command “Leave” Offer it again and repeat the word “Leave” He will soon know that he mustn't touch that article.”
So this relates to a lot of the weirdness that I think involves too much talking to dogs. I think we give them more credit for understanding English most of the time then we should. She then talks about dogs nipping on clothing and you know, in this episode, I'm mostly talking about nipping that dogs do on our body parts, but certainly the suggestions I'm giving for how to reduce nipping involve nipping that's happening on you or any object really. Anyway, she says, “I get many letters from dog owners whose dogs tear the edges of their husband's trousers or overcoats.” Apparently only husbands suffer this problem. “In fact, they tear the clothing of anyone who comes to the house.” Oh, anyway, I spoke too soon. It's not just the husbands. “The quickest cure. I know for this…” This is Barbara Woodhouse, everyone. She was a big, big dog trainer in the eighties, in the seventies, I think too in England. She says, “the quickest cure I know for this is to arrive at the house and go straight to the kitchen, fill a small jug, walk on, and when the dog starts tearing to pour some water over its head, so dog gets such a shock that it doesn't often do it again. This method is better than all the scolding in the world for the dog doesn't know where the water comes from. He only comes to realize that cloth tearing causes it to flow.”
And actually while we're on the topic of Barbara Woodhouse, this doesn't relate to nipping, but this is my favorite passage from this book. Like I said, I like to flip through it sometimes just to find the weirdest parts and I think this is the weirdest part of the whole book. This is Barbara Woodhouse on chasing cars. “Dogs that chase moving things are a menace and must be cured at all costs. Car chasing is one of their worst crimes. When I was in Ireland recently, I noticed all the dogs in country districts chase cars.” Isn't that hilarious? It's like only Irish dogs chase cars. Anyway, um, “nobody seemed to do anything about it and the dogs were incredibly clever at avoiding getting run over. I am glad to say the dogs in Great Britain that chase cars are the exception rather than the rule, but when they do get this dangerous habit, they undoubtedly cause many accidents. How can it be stopped? The quickest and most efficient way I know is to enlist the aid of a friend with a car. Ask him to drive you slowly past the dog that chases cars and as the dog comes into the attack, throw out as hard as you possibly can, any fat, hard covered book and make certain that the book hits the dog. The shock it gives the dog so frightens it that I have never had to repeat the treatment more than twice. Even though the dog may have chased cars for years. My favorite book is an old AA handbook. It is just the right size,”
It cracks me up each time.
“My favorite book is an old AA handbook. It is just the right size. Try not to lean out of the car to throw it as then the dog may connect you with the throwing of the book when you want him to connect to the car with a shock he gets.”
So that's what you can do with your book.
Again, you know, this brings us to the topic of, of punishment, which like I said before, you know, one of the problems with punishment is that you have to have the behavior occurring in order to punish it. And if you're having to punish something multiple times, then you probably are actually reinforcing it. So I don't know, you know, maybe there are some dogs who think it's exciting to have the AA handbook thrown at them from a car.
Anyway. As I often say about dog training advice, think about really does this make sense in a kind of “Oh duh way”. Like, Oh, right. Of course this intuitively is understandable. Throwing books out of cars is not to me an intuitively understandable solution to any problem. I guess unless it's a book you really hate.
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Annie:
One of the easiest ways I think to stop a puppy from nipping all over your fingers and hands and arms is to give them a bully stick. I love bully sticks. We go through them like crazy at School for the Dogs. Bully sticks come in various sizes. I recommend a longer one. What's great about a bully stick is it's a totally appropriate thing for your dog to be chewing and you can hold the other end of the bully stick. So you're still going to be close together. You're still going to be able to play together if that's what you were doing or if they're just hanging out in your lap, you can still do that, but you're letting them use their mouth in a way that is totally okay.
If you're not familiar with what a bully stick is, it is actual bull penis. And we have a blog post on our site and, I believe, it's one of the top hits when people search for “what is a bully stick.” I wrote it a few years ago when I went into a kind of internet K hole trying to figure out exactly what they were. You'll find some diagrams there of, bull penises and other animal’s penises. Sometimes it's called pizzle.
Anyway, I think bully sticks are great for many reasons. Um, one is that it’s single ingredient. We have a lot of dogs who have allergies. And if you're giving a chew or a treat that contains many things, it can be hard to figure out exactly what it is your dog is allergic to. But if the thing only contains bull penis, then you know, he was allergic to bull penis.
And I should point out, for those of you who are listening, who haven't seen a bully stick. They look like cigars, they look kind of like long cigars. And actually that was part of what got me into the research on bully sticks when I did it a few years ago is because they're pretty thin. And I just imagined a bull would have, like, a bigger penis. But they're like dried, I guess. I admit, I still have some questions about bull penis, about the origins of the bull penis that we sell, so I will report back. But anyway, I guess they're like they're hung up and dried. And I did find that there are regions in the world where people make canes out of bull penises. Um, and you know, another cool thing about bull penis is cause we really are using the whole animal.
If you're going to give your dog something to chew, I was suggest a bull penis. More than… sorry, I suggest a bully stick. How many times can I say penis during this episode that's not about penises. I suggest a bully stick. We have some great bully stick holders at Store for the Dogs that make them last a little bit longer.
Now I would not suggest something, like,a raw hide or Greenie or anything that could possibly really break apart or get caught in your dog's esophagus or stomach in any way. Bull penises, I have known dogs just swallow them, but they will disintegrate over time. I do not suggest that you let a dog swallow a bull penis. I said it that again- bully stick! I do not suggest that you let your dog swallow a bully stick, which is why I think a holder is a good idea. And if they do swallow it, you should definitely get it checked out. But, I believe it's not as bad as them swallowing like a Nylabone.
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Other than giving them the right things to chew. Here are three other suggestions. One is to feed them in toys. I think we can do a better job of helping them use their mouth like nature intended, which was to, you know, pull small animals apart, by giving them little challenges when we feed them. That might mean putting their food in a Toppl, which is kind of like a Kong, if you’re familiar with Kongs, but they look kind of like big rubber thimbles that you can stuff food into. My dog Amos gets a lot of his meals in a Toppl. I usually put his food in the topple and then freeze it. So he's not a puppy anymore, but he certainly enjoys the little mouth workout that he gets from having to get his food out of the Toppl. Um, you can put food in something like a slow food bowl, like the Northmate feeders. Anyway, we have a variety of different, really great work to eat toys in our shop at School for the Dogs and online at storeforthedogs.com.
Of course, you can also give them treats in these toys or, you know, whether the treat is a dry treat or something like peanut butter. But my feeling is when you have a puppy, you're probably feeding them three times a day anyway, so if you can make good use out of…out of those meals, by putting them in a toy, why not?
Another thing you can do is play tug. Now the internet, I know, also has lots of things to say about whether or not tug with your dog is a good idea. I'm all for it. I think tug is a really great time to teach “drop it”, for example, and I really don't believe things that I know people read on the internet about how your puppy is going to think they're dominant over you if you let them win at the game of tug. I don't pretend to read puppy minds, but I am more inclined to believe that your puppy is just going to be really psyched to have gotten the toy from you, if they win the game of tug. And I wouldn't try and read into it any more than that.I think you could let your puppy win every game of tug and they would still honor and respect you as the person who provides all of their food and everything good in their life.
So tug is a great game. Particularly if you have a long tug toy, that could be a rope, a nice long rope. That could be a stuffed animal. The flirt pole is a really great tug toy. It's kind of like a fishing rod that has, kind of, I dunno, it looks kind of like a fishing rod or like a weird, kind of like a weird PVC pipe whip that has a bit of fleece at the end and,sort of like, a big cat toy. But the reason why long toys are nice is because they.. it puts some distance between you and the dog, which means some distance between those very sharp teeth and your hands.
And interestingly, the only times I've ever been bit by a puppy to the point of screaming, bloody murder, and in eight years, I think this has happened maybe three times. The only time that's ever happened to me has been when I'm playing tug with a puppy, with something that's on the shorter side and they go for the toy and seem to get my hand by mistake. And the reason why I think this is a mistake is because it's such a different kind of bite when a puppy bites you in that way, when they're going for the toy and they get your hand instead. It's like, they've…it’s like someone came down on my thumbnail with…it's like someone coming down on your hand with force, from above, with a Thumbtack. It really, really hurts.
And I mean, most puppy nipping, honestly, doesn't hurt that much. Doesn't feel good, but it's not like screaming kind of hurt. And each time that's happened, it's a real reminder to me of how much control they are already learning to exert over their mouth. They could be using that much force all the time when they're playing with me, but generally they're not. And you know, any nipping I experience feels much more like, I don't know, like a safety pin gently being brought down my arm without a lot of power. As opposed to that, like, you know, some tack from above pain.
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One theory of the reason why puppies have such sharp teeth is that they're learning how to use their jaws with great delicacy when needed. Because they have teeth that are so painful even without the jaw coming down with a lot of force because they have smaller jaws then they're going to when they're older dogs, when they're puppies. So it's kind of this…the force of their jaw is, kind of, exaggerated from what it will be in the future because the teeth are so sharp. When they're older, they're going to have duller teeth, but an overall much more powerful mouth so it's important that they learn very carefully, what is too much pressure? What isn’t too much pressure? And, you know, puppies tend to start losing their teeth around 14, 16 weeks old. And by that point, most of them are already pretty expert at using their mouths in the way that they should be.
Now, if you really have to have your hands near your puppy's face and you don't have a bully stick at hand or something else that you can let them chew on or play with, one little trick is to smear some butter or peanut butter or even olive oil on your hand. And let them lick that because licking and biting can't happen at the same time. If I don't have anything smearable handy, often I'll make what I call a “hand Kong”, which is basically just stuffing a whole bunch of treats into my hand, into the center, basically, of my fist and letting them lick stuff out of it. They tend to be very good at getting stuff out of the hand without using their teeth. And I think this can really help them actually learn how to interact with your hand, without using their teeth.
If you have a dog who tends to use their teeth to get a treat from you, that is also certainly something that we want to teach them not to do. For that I would suggest using what we call a liquid treat dispenser at School for the Dogs. We have them at storeforthedogs.com, but you wanna just put cheese, like cream cheese or peanut butter into a travel shampoo, squirty bottle type thing. Or, I believe, the Kong company makes different kinds of treats that are in tubes that you can let them lick. We also like using liverwurst for this at School for the Dogs or Bark Pouches, which are liquid kind of treats in a squeezy tube. Or I recently discovered Kalles, which is a Swedish kind of Cod Roe spreadable fish eggs, Kalles, K A L L E S. We also have that at School for the Dogs and you can also buy it at Ikea. That too, it's pretty salty. So I don't like to give a lot of it, but all of these things are just really nice ways to give your dog a treat that forces them to lick rather than to use their teeth at all.
The last thing that I want to mention about nipping is probably my most important piece of advice, and that is get your puppy and appropriate playmate. It should be an appropriate puppy playmate, I should add. You don't necessarily even have to find a whole puppy playgroup. Puppies tend to play best one-on-one at our puppy play times we try to not have more than four dogs. If we have four, then we usually pair them off into twos. If we have three, we usually rotate one out.
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The nipping that puppies do on us, they would rather be doing on another puppy, but they're going to do it on us because it's, like, they're trying to turn us into a puppy. So if you can just give them a puppy, you're going to become less interesting than a puppy. Also, a puppy is covered with fur. If you were covered with fur, the nipping your puppy does on you would hurt a whole lot less. And when puppies use their mouths to play roughly with each other, they do sometimes give each other a little correction. Sometimes that can be a “yip”, sometimes they back off and don't want to play anymore. I mean, we can only observe some of these things. They're probably giving each other signals when they're inappropriate with their mouths that we're not even perceiving. But they do seem to teach this to each other in a really, really beautiful way, but it needs to happen every day. And I think it's important that puppies play with other puppies rather than with adult dogs because if a puppy isn't using their mouth in the right way with an adult dog, adult dogs tend to be a lot less patient than puppies are with each other. And you want your puppy to be corrected in a nice way not in an overly harsh way. Some adult dogs are better than others, for sure, but I prefer that puppies play with other puppies whenever possible.
So if your puppy is nipping on you, I suggest you run through this list of suggestions, make sure that you're giving your dog something appropriate to chew on, making sure they're getting to use their mouth to do some problem solving during meal times, play some tug, get them a good playmate to get some of their mouth ya-yas out. Again, so important, if your puppy can get 10 minutes of play time a day, I think it could make a huge, huge difference. Um, and you know if all of the above doesn't work, then try what the internet says, turn yourself into a squeaky toy and let me know if that works. You never know.
Fun Dog fact of the Day: did you know that dog saliva actually contains all sorts of healing properties and was used in various medical rites in ancient Egypt and in ancient Greece. In modern French, there's even a saying “la langue du chien est la langue d’un médecin”, which means a dog's tongue is a doctor's tongue.
Our Woof Shout out this week goes to our member Mu. Mu is an adorable, Papilion. Very small. His name is actually Mu like the Greek letter. He is a very sensitive guy who doesn't get really excited about hanging out with other dogs, but his humans have been bringing him to School Yard now for, I think, close to a year. And this dog has made so much progress just about being brave around new dogs, new people, and it's been a wonderful thing to watch. So we love you Mu and hope to see you around the School Yard soon.
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