how to play with a puppy

[teinloft]

Hello everybody!

Nala just arrived in our home. She is 8 weeks old and its our seccond week with her in the house. She's adorable, very active and loves do play everytime!

But always when we try to play with her, she's biting A LOT our hands! We are trying the bite inhibition techniques reccomended in this forum, like saying "ouch" and stop playing with her when she bites too hard, its getting a little better.

We always play with her shaking her toys and some ropes, but very ofter she comes to the toy and just ignore it, comming directly to our hands to bite, sometimes really hard (we got a lot of scars on our hands/arms).

I guess the kind of game we are playing (shaking toys and etc) is exciting her a lot, and this provoques the bites.

Do you guys have a reccomendation to what kind of games should we do to demotivate the bitings? We are doing the bite inhibition for 2 weeks, its too soon to expect her to stop biting our hands like a velociraptor?

[JohnyPepperoni]

My 10 week puppy was like that and learned to bite just softly my hands in less than a week, about my shoes and pants I can't say the same :P keep doing the bite inhibition techinques with conviction everytime she will get it! I've read some people recomend not playing games like tug of war and such when puppys are in this phase, I've been avoiding it too, just playing fetch the toys, find the food in the cups shaking the toys, he rarely goes for my hands now. Some people also buy like a bad taste spray and put it on their hands and things they dont want the puppy to bite but some puppys actually like the taste and then it's worse lol. But it's just a phase keep doing that she will not be a puppy forever

[Cassie]

Your puppy is very young. With consistent training he will stop biting but it will take awhile. It's amazing that their cute little faces can bring such a bite, eh? What helped my dog was to give frequent naps in the crate. At this age they will nap quite a bit...like every couple of hours. The dog will come out of the crate after a nap like a little angel. Dont lay down on the floor and play as the dog gets more nippy when you are in that position...

[ee61re]

The nap thing is a good point - I remember Sophie tended to get a bit more nippy when she was tired.

[My6beagles]

Originally Posted by ee61re

The nap thing is a good point - I remember Sophie tended to get a bit more nippy when she was tired.

I'm nippy if I don't get a nap !!!!!


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[teinloft]

Nice tips guys, im trying not to sit on the floor to play with her, and it actually worked for a little.

I also found that she is amazing with training tricks, so i'm trying to play with her like that until she gets older and recognize her name and etc.

She already know how to sit and lay down but gets confused with her name, would you believe that?

I'm trying to teach "fetch" but often she doesnt bring the toy back, any tips to train that?

[JohnyPepperoni]

I threw a toy and pointed to it while saying fetch then I called him and he got it back, I gave him one piece of food then repeated, he droped the toy for the food, he got it eventually :P