Dog Nipping

Dog nipping is a common behavioral problem, especially when dealing with smaller breeds of dogs and puppies.

Many pet owners unknowingly encourage this behavior, and think that nipping is something that is cute. However this often becomes a problem when the dog matures and then being nipped at becomes a more painful experience.

Normally when the puppy is growing up, it receives behavioral cues from its mother and littermates that too much nipping is a bad thing. Usually if it gets too hard its mother will administer a physical punishment. And if it gets nips too hard at its littermates, they will simply stop playing with it. 

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But human owners usually do not set boundaries for young puppies. And this is to their own detriment.

What To Do

The next time you experience dog nipping, you have to give your dog a negative punishment. This could come in several different forms. First of all you could yell really loudly something like "OUCH" to scare your dog a little bit. Then you could follow this up by ignoring your dog or simply walk away from your dog.

Once you do this several times and startle your dogs, they will quickly learn that there are negative consequences to dog nipping, and this is often enough to curtail this behavior.

Adult dogs that do a lot of nipping do so because they were not properly trained as puppies. Retraining adult dogs is a little bit harder than puppies, but it can be done.

Establish Dominance

The most important thing to remember, is to make sure that it they know that you are the alpha dog in the house. Once they realize that you are in charge, they are less likely to nip at you.

Some ways that you can reestablish your dominance over the dog, is to control their feeding times. Only feed dogs when you want to, and only set the bowl out for a set amount of time. Your dog has to learn that you have total control over when they can feed.

You may also want to stop your dog from sleeping in your bedroom or in your bedroom. This is another way to stop dog nipping and reestablishing your dominance in the house.