Preventing biting

Prevention is definitely better than curing, so the following is essential:

• Don’t play rough with your puppy and stop playing if your puppy gets too excited. Also, no tug of war or biting games.
• You want to be calm at all times, particularly during mad hours (Puppies go mad at dusk and dawn – this is ordinary). These first 2 are most likely the main causes of puppy nipping there is.
• Practice being able to open your puppies mouth to inspect his teeth. This is especially beneficial later in his life in any case.
• Give your puppy lots of toys that he is permitted to chew on. Cow hooves or kongs are wonderful.

Dealing with biting

If your Labrador puppy does bite, these are the most common tactics for dealing with it:

• Play Dead: This is the easiest if you can bear the pain. Just let your hand go limp and disregard the puppy. Then when he lets go, slowly remove your hand with no eye contact. If there’s no resistance in your hand, he can’t bite hard and he’ll do less damage. When he starts realizing that he gets no reaction from you, he’ll start chewing on more gratifying items.
• Be Dominant: Calmly grasp around the top of the puppy’s muzzle and say “No” in a low pitched calm voice. No need to shout. You should only need to hold him lightly. This is both dominant behavior (Enforcing the fact that you are in control) and also happens to be the way his mom would have dealt with it.
• Show pain then praise: A high pitched victim like squeak will usually shock the pup enough to let go. As soon as he lets go, you must praise him. This happens when puppies play together and one of them gets too rough. This one is challenging for men (Our squeak isn’t high pitched enough) If this doesn’t work, you’re probably not doing it right and one of the other methods might be easier.
• Show you have teeth too: Make biting an bad experience. If he bites you, push his cheek inwards so that he bites his own cheek or grab his lower jaw with your thumb on his tongue and other fingers under his jaw. Exert gentle pressure until he pulls away.
• If the puppy bites your ankle, just walk away and raise your foot into his face when you take off (I’m not talking about kicking your puppy, more of a nudge to dislodge him and show him that it is disagreeable). This seems cruel, but you generally only have to do this 2 or 3 times before they make the connection – Don’t worry puppy heads are made of rubber in any case

Puppy Aggression

All of this assumes that there’s no aggression and it’s just the Labrador puppy playing. I wouldn’t worry too much about it in a puppy younger than 6 months old, however if you have an aggressive Labrador retriever (not likely), it will probably begin manifesting itself when they are approximately 16 – 20 weeks old. If you think your puppy is genuinely aggressive, you can easily make it worse and you should rather speak to a behavioral consultant.

This post via the Labrador Training blog where you can get information on Labrador training techniques and all the latest Labrador puppy related news. The original post can be found here: Everything you need to know about how to stop puppies biting