Why Do Puppies Bite And How To Stop Them From Biting
We have all experienced it when we get a new dog. For the first day, they are adorable puppies who can do nothing wrong and are unbearably cute. It is not long though until the same puppy is terrorising the household by biting people and testing their new teeth against the furniture. Training your puppy to not bite is one of the first things you must do, alongside toilet training them. You can’t hope to train your puppy not to bite without knowing why it wants to. Once you know why the puppy is behaving like this, you can change the factors that are causing it to bite. Here’s some insight into why your puppy bites.
One simple reason that some puppies bite is that they want to find out more about their environment. Unlike people, they do not have hands, so their first instinct when it comes to something new is to feel it with their mouths or taste it. Puppies learn everything about something by how it tastes, smells and feels in their mouth – it is how so much useful information is taken in for later. The main thing here is to teach your puppy that it is never acceptable to bite a human for any reason.
Just as children go through teething, so do puppies, and it’s just as sore! Dogs have an instinctive solution to teething pains – biting and pressing down as hard on the teeth as possible. For a puppy, the relief is great. From your perspective though, you would rather if the dog did not decide to chew on your expensive furniture. You can control what your puppy chews on by buying it a specifically designed dental toy for teething puppies. These are available from all good pet shops and are designed to relieve the pain of teething.
As with all dogs, when a puppy chooses to bite someone it can be a simple expression of self-defence. We are all a lot bigger than our dogs, and especially puppies. It is therefore very easy to hurt them unintentionally and without even realising it. A child who picks up a puppy may hold it wrong or pet it too hard, accidentally hurting it. Being scared and sore, the dog will unsurprisingly bite the person causing them pain – there is little to do about this except to be careful.
Some dogs will naturally hunt. This, after all, is what they were bred for over the years. Although they make some of the best pets, especially for young children, you must be aware that they are inclined to go chasing after things and people. Sadly, such puppies may have a tendency at first to chase and bite people, even just gently. The important thing to bear in mind is that the puppy should learn you will not accept them behaving like this from the very start – that way it will not be a problem later on.