Quote:
Originally Posted by epchick
That is totally opposite of what i've been always told to do with dogs. When I was at the Vets, they had a movie (or television show not sure which) but they were talking about puppies and how to train.
First of all, dogs HAVE to bite/chew. If you don't teach them when it is appropriate to do it, then it can lead to a volatile situation.
Dogs learn by playing with other dogs. So when your dog starts biting the other dogs, they will let your dog know when he's biting too hard. For people that don't have other dogs (like myself), we have to be the one to teach when a bite is too hard. You don't scold the dog, because he'll either not correlate the scolding w/ the bite or he'll learn that biting/chewing (since a lot of the time a puppy is essentially teething) is bad, and it really isn't.
So if your dog bites you too hard, you let out a yelp---one that is similar to what a puppy would do, and immediately give the dog a chew toy. This way the puppy learns that 1) biting that hard is unacceptable, 2) he'll learn what he's suppose to chew.
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I know -- I've been told that, too, but (1) it didn't really work for us (maybe 'cause I really can't yelp
), and (2) our trainer, who has degrees in animal behavior and approaches everything based on research, told us to do it the way I described. They both get there, I guess, depending on the dog.