Jo's Old Site

I was just telling mum yesterday that I have decided to tell Ilse “no” or “leave it” whenever she goes to mouth my hand as I’ve realised saying “ouch” or just removing my hand and saying nothing doesn’t teach dogs that it isn’t acceptable.

I also recently wrote that I’ve read that if you want to stop your pups from biting, than keep your hands and fingers away from their mouths; but this is sometimes unavoidable when we are interacting with our dogs: for instance when we are grooming or trying to pat them.

So then we have to or in other words need to teach our puppies to accept being groomed and patted (although with some dogs, people may find that they cannot pat too much because their dog has a dominant personality.)

This also highlights that we need to get to know our dogs, and we can get to know them by getting a puppy used to a level of attention from us.

Also when we say “no” we need to say it in a low voice, (if they go to bite) this is because tones are very important to dogs, and puppies and to be effective we have to become more aware of how we sound and not just react.

This is where feedback from other people is essential, and then another word we can say to a dog is “leave it” whenever our dogs go to mouth our hands, combs, or brushes and when they do we can praise them as we are patting or grooming.

Also another way is to distract them with toys, or food as this stops the owner from nagging at their dog; it is also advisable to keep our grooming sessions short but regular to begin with and build up gradually as dogs need time to get use to it.

Praising our dogs is also important while we do these things, and with some people this is easy to forget when giving their dog food also again we have to be aware of what tone we use and also be aware of volume as well. As with some people when they are praising their dogs, it may sometimes sound to other people that they are doing the opposite. Then another thing that I’ll like to add is when we say “no” or “leave it” because our dogs are biting something that is unapproved we also need to be aware of how far away we are from them.

This is because it is a good idea to get closer to get the pup focused on us, (as sometimes puppies will stop what they are doing and start looking at us instead) then while they are looking we can praise them.

We also need to realise that dogs are dogs, and that we need to provide outlets for them such as it is okay to chew on approve things but not unapproved things.

As our dogs may know what is fun, but we have a different idea of what is right and what is wrong and this is why we need to set those rules, or boundries for our dogs and the earlier we start the better it is for us and our dogs.