Bite Inhibition

One of our main activities with the puppies at this stage is teaching them bite inhibition. It’s crucial that the puppies learn not to use their teeth on humans before they get much older. There’s a short window in which bite inhibition has to be learned, or we risk winding up with an adult dog that cannot live safely with humans.

Dr. Ian Dunbar is an expert on dog behavior and a pioneer in puppy training. Harriett and I first became aware of his work in the early 90’s. He’s published some great books on dog training, especially with respect to handling puppies. His website, The Dog Star Daily, has a nice set of free training materials for new dog owners. Since we don’t keep the pups long enough to do major training, our main focus with the foster pups is Dr. Dunbar’s chapters titled Puppy Biting and Teaching Bite Inhibition. His books and these chapters in particular are highly recommended if you’re thinking of getting or already have a puppy or young dog.

The basic idea is to mimic what a puppy would do if bitten too hard by a playmate. They yelp and stop playing for a few seconds. If you watch PuppyCam you see and hear this all the time. It happens during the play fights, a very important activity for bite inhibition and the biggest reason pups should not leave the litter until they are eights weeks old.

The idea is to say “OUCH!” is a sharp voice whenever we feel a puppy’s teeth, then pull our hand away and stop playing for a few seconds. You have to say it like you mean it. “OUCH!”, not “oh, owww, he’s soooo cuuuuute” in some kind of baby voice. This method doesn’t work immediately, but if everyone who plays with the pup uses the Ouch method eventually the puppy begins to figure out that humans are very delicate and cannot be bitten.

And there’s the rub. Everyone who plays with the pup has to use this method or it doesn’t work very well. It takes persistent training over a few months to completely train a puppy not to bite. We can get it started while the pup is with us in foster care, but the new pet owners have to continue and expand on what we do. This was recently brought home to us in a big way when a puppy we had in foster care for a couple weeks was returned to the Shelter because of excessive biting. You can read Sasha’s story, Some Dogs Are Worth A Little Extra Effort, at the More Blue Dots blog.

Harriett and I have used Dr. Dunbar’s “Ouch!” method on over 800 puppies. It really works, but you have to be firm and consistent. Don’t allow anyone to let the puppy use their teeth. Some folks say they don’t mind when a puppy chews on their finger, but if that was a one-year old dog it would be a different story!