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This is the Puppy Training Podcast Episode #38: Ouch! That Hurts! This podcast is designed to help you on your journey of becoming best friends through love and learning as you train your own dog from home, and I'm here to help you every step of the way. This is the Puppy Training Podcast, and I'm your host, Amy Jensen.  

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Hello, everyone, how's it going? How are those puppies? I know some of you aren't getting very much sleep at the moment. Others are probably wondering what to do about those razor-sharp puppy teeth. Good news: that's what we're gonna talk about today. And many are absolutely in love with their new friends. Am I right? I know puppies are so cute, and it's a good thing a lot of times, but I can't help but have a better day when you watch a puppy play. I mean seriously, especially to take him out in the snow. If you live where you have snow and you've watched a dog playing in the snow, you know what I'm talking about. Boots absolutely loves the snow. In fact, he prances in it, he'll run and then he'll leap and then he'll run and then he'll leap. He'll stick his head down in it and he comes back up and he's covered in snow and there's just joy in his eyes. Things like that just make my day better. We appreciate our dogs for all they do for us. Thank you, everyone, for listening to this podcast. I truly appreciate your support and for sharing the word with your friends and family. I want you to know that I achieved our goal last year of reaching over 1000 puppy families, which is amazing, and I credit that a lot to you. So huge thank you. Thank you, thank you. I know many listeners have joined my only puppy school, and I enjoy working with you. If you haven't yet and are interested, check it out. This podcast is the tip of the iceberg compared to the help and the information that you can find in our online program. If you're looking for details, go to www.BaxterandBella.com/learn-more. You can get all the details.

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Let's get to puppy mouthing, that's the topic of the day. This is a hot topic in puppy training and one that anyone with a puppy can appreciate. Why do puppies mouth? We're gonna answer several questions today, that's the first one. Is my puppy being aggressive? What can I do about it? And will it last forever? Those are the four main questions that I want to answer today with puppy mouthing, biting, that kind of thing. Let's first answer why do puppies mouth? Puppies mouth and bite for three main reasons really. They do it to explore and learn about the world around them, much like a child who puts everything in their mouth. A little toddler who's exploring things. Puppies do the same thing. Instead of using their paws, though, to explore, they use their mouths to explore. They do it to strengthen their jaws and initiate play. It's a natural dog behavior to get those jaws strong, so puppies' mouths, if you watch them, are literally going every minute, every day. Their mouths are always moving, always trying to chew or mouth something, and then finally, that initiate play, that's how they play together. If you've ever watched puppies in a litter, pretend that your puppies still back where he came from with his siblings and their playing, you'll notice that they play a lot with their mouths. That's just how they interact and that's what they're used to. When we bring them to our house, naturally, that's what they're going to do. Their mouths are constantly moving when they're awake, and they'll do so until there are about five months old when they lose their baby teeth and those are replaced with adult teeth. It's kind of what you can expect, so we'll get more into that in just a minute, but here are a few facts. Fact #1: puppies love quick movements. Fact #2: puppies love being with others, they're very social. Fact #3: puppies see what they want, and they want it right now. And fact #4: puppies have razor-sharp teeth. If you put those four facts together, we pretty much have a nightmare on our hands. Oftentimes, when we think of getting a puppy, we think of this cute, live, fluffy stuffed animal kind of creature that's going to be so snuggly and warm and loving, which is true some of the time. While others are seeing more of a piranha type view. Your puppy comes home and they're biting your ankles or biting your shoes or biting your fingers, they're mouthing everything, they're getting on to pant legs and sleeves and all sorts of things. So, yes, puppies can be extremely cute, and some are snugly, not all, but some. They're all sweet and funny at times, but they do also have razor-sharp teeth, and they move their mouths all day long, except for when they're sleeping, and my guess then is they're probably dreaming about it. This is just a fact: that puppies use their mouth, but they do it for reasons that are natural to dogs, but there are things that we can do about it.  

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Let's answer the next question: is my puppy being aggressive? This is something that I get asked a lot in my puppy program. I'll even get sent videos of puppies interacting where it does look aggressive and it sounds aggressive. I want to tell you, though, that most of this puppy behavior is not aggression. This is not full-blown aggression. There's going to be a small percentage where that could possibly be the case, but for the most part, a brand new puppy, when they are using their mouth and they're play growling and they're biting at your pants and arms and sleeves, they're not being what we would term aggressive. Your puppy is simply doing what he knows how to do. Again, let's go back to that thought of the puppy with his littermates. If you've never watched puppies play, I'm gonna link a video so you can go back to the show notes and see a link. If you'll click on that, I want to thank Janessa at Camden Lane Labradoodles for letting me record her puppies playing. I just did a little snapshot of puppies that were about seven weeks old, so they were a week out from going home, and you can hear as they play that there's a few growling behaviors going on, they're tackling each other, you can see them biting one another's tails and years and legs, they're pouncing on each other, but they're having fun. They're just playing and interacting. Now they do a really good job, this is what puppies are really good at, is telling each other when it's too much or when it's too hard. They'll let out a little yelp and they'll run away. And so the other puppy learns, 'Oh, my playmate left. I was too rough', so they learn next time to be softer and not as hard with their mouth. We call that bite inhibition, and it's a super important lesson that all puppies learn. They need to know when too much is too much so that they get that nice soft mouth. That way, when your dogs and adults and let's say something startles them or surprises them and if they were to bite, they would probably not do as much damage as they would if they had never developed that bite inhibition. If a dog wanted to hurt you with a bite, they absolutely could do some serious damage. But most dogs grow up with that bite inhibition, where they've learned how to use their mouths in an appropriate way. Back to that litter, the puppies are playing, they're pouncing on each other, they're tackling each other they're flip-flopping, they're biting one another, and then we go and pick up that puppy and take it home with us. It's not really fair for us to expect that puppy to act any differently than it did yesterday with its littermates. It's coming now into our home, it's still going to try to initiate play the way it did yesterday. It's going to try to mouth us and bite us and initiate play that way and we just need to simply teach our puppy some new rules, which does take time, and how we like to play because we play very differently than puppies play. What can we do about it? I'm gonna give you ten ideas that you can try today, and this will really help with your puppies mouthing behaviors.  

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First, do not let your puppy have free time all day. Create a routine instead, structure her day so that it's mixed with play, settling, crate time, play, outside in the yard to run around a little bit, maybe we try some loose leash walking, we do some training sessions, then she's back in a crate, she's settling, and then she's playing. So we're mixing up the routine so that it's back and forth from play to settle so that she's not just continually playing and getting more and more wound up as the hours go on in the day.  

speaker 0:   8:11
Next, we can teach her to relax and settle on cue. With that first tip of getting her to settle, we can get her to settle not when she's just in her crate, but when she's out with us and we can put it on cue. I like to get my puppies when they're brand new and just hold them against my chest. Their back is to my chest, and I rub their ears and I scratch their belly, and I slowly work my hands down their legs and out to their paws, and I really just get them to melt like butter. If you do this from day one, several times a day, and you're rewarding your puppy as you do this, most puppies come to really like this Now, in the beginning, they're not gonna do that for a long time. I would aim for maybe 30 seconds, and then I would build that to a minute, and I'd build that minute to two minutes. But get your puppy in the habit of just relaxing. So we're playing, we're having fun, their energy levels are high, and then we're gonna settle.  

speaker 0:   9:06
The third tip would be to replace the clothes that she's biting with the rope toy. Keep toys handy, especially if you have kids in your home. I'm arming my kids with toys. 'Here, carry this around here. Hold this. Grab onto this', so that when the puppy is out and about, they can redirect that puppy onto something appropriate, not the child's clothing or the arms. Now kids are super exciting to puppies because they have higher-pitched voices. Their movements are so quick, they're unpredictable, so puppies just absolutely gravitate to kids. So teaching our kids to stand still as statues if the puppies being too rough, they become very boring to the puppy. The puppy moves on to something that's moving. Again, keeping those toys handy and long enough toys that the puppy can hold one end and your child can hold the other so that their hands not close to where that puppy is actually holding onto the toy. That's really important and helpful.  

speaker 0:   9:59
Point number four would be to exchange soft for soft and hard for hard. This means our puppies are constantly mouthing and chewing different textures and surfaces. They're going to go for things sometimes that are soft. If you notice they're biting onto clothing, I would replace that with a softer, squeaky toy or a rope toy, something that soft they can really sink their teeth into. If your puppy's going for shoes or table legs, furniture legs, something that's harder than I would replace that with a harder item such as a Benebone. I'm a big fan of Benebones. They last a really long time, they have different flavors, my dogs absolutely love them. In the beginning, you might say my puppy doesn't even want to do that thing. But if you hold onto the Benebone and wiggle it around a little bit, that's more exciting than just dropping it on the floor. Puppies love movement, so if you hold onto that Benebone and wiggle it around, your puppy is more likely to want to sit and engage with it.  

speaker 0:   10:57
Next, find something your puppy likes to play, such as fetch. Toss a ball a few feet away. Will she go get it? Engage her in a game and then we can get her focus onto the game and not on your body movement. Not your hands or feet moving, but the ball that's now being tossed or the toy that's now being tossed. Remember that a lot of times when the puppy is trying to bite you or mouth you, they are initiating play, they're wanting to engage and interact with you and play with you. So teaching them to play a game of fetch or tug even. Tug, for me, has rules. I'm not whipping my puppy back and forth and up and down and shaking them around. It's a very slow, methodical movement, but I do absolutely let me puppy grab onto a toy that I'm holding, and then we move around the room together. We just don't want to get it into a too aggressive of emotion that's amping our puppies up. But tug is very effective, usually, so finding a game that your puppy likes to play and focusing them on that takes their attention off of the biting and mouthing of you. Give your puppy something to chew, so Kongs are wonderful. Puzzle toys, things that are going to take some time for your puppy to figure out, and to interact with. Kong's are wonderful. You can go to their website and they have a list of recipes that you can find and stuff them with. I like to have to Kong's on hand, one that's in my freezer, ready to go, and then one that's already in my puppies crate that's ready to go so that if my puppy is mouthing or biting, he's placed in the crate, but there's already something in there for him to do. Last week we talked about timing on the podcast, and you can see that if I were to put my puppy in his crate for biting or mouthing and then I produce a yummy Kong, he might think that he's getting rewarded for this kind of behavior with the yummy Kong, so I like to have the Kong already in the crate, ready to go so that the timing is such that he's getting really bitey or mouthy, and I just pick him up, place him in the crate because I don't want him biting or mouthing me, and he needs to settle down, ut there's already something to do in the crate.  

speaker 0:   12:58
Next, we can pull out some treats and redirect the behavior. We can turn this into a training session. If our puppies wanting attention and he's wanting to interact, that's a great time to do a training session. We need his attention in order to train, and we need his motivation. If you have some high-value rewards or even some low-value rewards, depending on the situation and where you're working, if you're working inside, you could probably try to use some of his kibble or dog food and get him to work for it. Teach him a new behavior. If you're in my program, Unit 3 is a great place to go when you just need to pick something random or something fun to do for a few minutes to get his behavior and the attention off of the biting and the mouthing. Practice things he already knows. Maybe he knows sit. Maybe he knows down. Maybe he knows roll. Maybe he knows shake or high five. Go through a variety of those, mixe them up. Add two at a time, five at a time. Throw in a super simple one. Maybe then we try to lengthen a stay, but make our sessions exciting and also just he never knows what's coming next. If he'll try to buy into that, he's more likely to engage with you in that training session. So absolutely, f he's wanting to come and play and interact with you, instead of the biting and the mouthing, let's redirect him onto a training session.  

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Always supervise your puppy when kids are around. Never let your kids play with the puppy alone until cues are established and your puppy knows how to sit for attention, play, petting, et cetera, and your child also knows how to get that behavior from your puppy. Depending on your children's ages, about five to six, they're starting to know and understand when they go to school and they get instruction from a teacher how to respond, then they're able to also do tasks that we assign them. Once they're about that age, you can absolutely incorporate them into the training. Show them how to get your puppy to sit and help them get that behavior from your puppy. But still, I would always, always, always supervise children when they are with the puppies, but you can slowly get them into doing some of these things on their own as you observe from a distance.

speaker 0:   14:59
Don't let kids roughhouse with the puppy, so this is the ninth point. We want to make sure that the puppy and the children are playing in an appropriate way. This is really tough because I know kids like to get out on the floor and they like to wrap their arms around the puppy and wrestle with him, but that's just going to tell the puppy it's playtime, and when the puppy thinks playtime, the puppy's going to play like a puppy. So that's going to definitely bring out that mouthy, bitey kind of behavior. I suggest instead of wrestling, let's get our kids to play a session of hide and go seek. Puppies love seeking out and finding things so we could do some scent games around the house, where we're hiding treats and getting our puppy to go find them. You can be very creative in how you can structure the play, but structure play is important. That way the puppy has a very specific thing that they are focusing on, the child has a specific goal they're focusing on, and they're together, but they're interacting appropriately. If you're a member of my program, head over to the paws-fit section. We've included there boredom busters, games, field trips. A lot of those games are impulse control and patience games, which are super important for a puppy to learn, that impulse control is really important, that is not natural dog behavior. I'm very big on teaching our puppies impulse control, and patience. Kids can play those games with your puppy. Again, go check that out at the paws-fit page of our website.

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Lastly, your puppy is most likely teething. Again they're going to start losing those baby teeth around month 4 or 5, and that's not so fun all the time. A lot of times their jaws and gums are sore, so I like to do things such as get a rag, wash it down, bring it out, put some yummy treats in the middle, maybe a little piece of freeze-dried liver or something, tie it in a knot, and then freeze it for about 20 minutes. Then pull it out and give it to your puppy. That gives them something nice and cold and enticing because that yummy treat is in the middle that puppies like to workout. They get pretty good at untying those knots, it's pretty impressive to watch.  

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So there you have it. 10 things that you can try and do to help you today with that puppy mouthing and biting. Now, the last question: Will it last forever? The good news is, no. Puppy mouthing will not last forever. It's a phase that every puppy goes through, so long as we don't make it a game for them or somehow rewarding, they will outgrow this. In fact, they're gonna outgrow it pretty quickly and head right into the teenager mode. Yay, right? Then you might be wishing your back in that phase. Just kidding. But seriously, there are a few tough phases is to get through before life gets easier with a dog, but please know that it does get easier. It does get better and that these things will pass. So while you're in the midst of this, please try to find things that your puppy is good at. Find the good in your puppy. Find the things that you love about your puppy. Remind yourself of the things that you love about your puppy. It is so worth every minute that you put into the puppy raising process. The time that you invest now, while your puppy is young, will make for a lifelong journey of enjoyment down the road, so please put in the time this initial puppy training is crucial. It's important, it's fun, and it can be painful. But we're going to do these things that I suggested today. Hopefully, it's gonna help with that puppy mouthing that biting. You're gonna realize it's not gonna last forever. This is a phase our puppy goes through. So for now, keep redirecting. Keep replacing. Do it as often as you need to use the crate. It's a great training tool. Always give your puppy something good to do inside the crate, but it's a great way to separate yourself when he just is out of control, which all puppies do. Another thing about that point is, think of a toddler that is never given any downtime, quiet time, or nap time. If they just go, go, go all day, as the day goes on, some of them get more and more wound up to the point that they just need a break. Puppies are the same. If they just have playtime all day long, they go, go, go, and they're never required to settle in between that, or they're never given a chance where they just need to lie down and rest, there's nothing else to do, they will get more and more wound up. So putting them in a crate, there's not a lot to do in there. They might chew on a toy for a minute, but most likely they'll settle down and take a nap and reset themselves. So please use the crates. They're really helpful in puppy training. Also, use toys when playing together. Keep them out and about so that you can grab them quickly. Whenever I'm petting my puppy, I always just have something in my hand that he can hold in a mouth on and bite on while I'm petting him, and then structure, don't puppy day, give him appropriate things to do, then he's not gonna be focused on biting you. I know you guys can do this.  

speaker 0:   19:34
That's it for today. Have a wonderful week. Happy training, and I'll talk to you next week. If you have a question about anything you heard on this podcast or any other puppy training question, visit my site BaxterandBella.com to contact me.