I have my first husky puppy and he is about 3 months old. We adopted him from a no kill shelter but we are not his first owners. A family turned him over to the shelter because they felt that they could not handle him and were actually afraid of him. We dont know if he came from a breeder or pet store or where he came from actually. We just know that we are owner number two.

He is a beautiful dog and we are getting very attached to him. His name is Finnley. So far house training is going decently and for the most part he is a very good dog. In three days he has learned to sit and give paw and almost has "down" down pat! The problem and its a big one, he bites and bites and bites. When he wakes up in the morning and late afternoon/evening, he is at his worst with biting. He is almost a wild man. I am very careful with him but there are probably about 10 puncture wounds in my arm and hands. I feel so badly for my wife because she cuts easily and he has both her arms scabbed up terribly. It's almost painful to look at:cry:  We say no bite to him and then when he stops we will praise him. Ive tried giving him a toy when he starts to bite. Sometimes he even jumps at my face or he will lurch at my arms. My wife has bite marks on her inner thighs. Its frustrating to say the least. Sometimes I can put my hand in his mouth and he will not bite or just bite down gently. Thats when I really praise him. We have had him a week now and in some areas he is doing so well. If his previous owners had small children, I could see why they gave up. He has quite a few toys to play with and a nice extra large crate. We spend most of our time in our bedroom and we have a sliding door that leads out to a pretty big yard. I dont let him unleashed yet because one side of our fence is bad and he has already gotten into the neighbors yard and had a great time playing with a very large black lab. I did put one of those stakes out there with a nice long cable on it and he seems to enjoy spending time out there. He has the whole lawn to romp on and for the most part he loves it out there. When the fence is rebuilt we will just keep the sliding door open and he can come and go as he wants. From day one we let him sleep on the bed at night and he seems to love it. He is out like a light with us and only once has he awoken us to let us know that he needed out for his business. Every other time he has made it the whole night. Are we doing wrong by letting him sleep on the bed? So thats pretty much the history but I need to find a way to teach him not to bite. Its frustrating because even though we have an agreement with the shelter that they will always take him back, we wont put him through that again. He's ours now and we are his and we just need to work out this terrible biting. Sometimes he is so loving that it's like a different dog. I will surely appreciate any help or advice on how to get him past this biting problem. We do love him!

Tom

He may have not been left with his littermates and mother long enough to learn bite inhibition. Have you read the thread on that? https://www.itsahuskything.com/t1646-puppy-biting

What worked well for us was yelping and screeching "ow" really loud when she does it, to her it sounded like a littermate and that's how they learn that doing that hurts. Timeouts are good as well, you have to leave the room til he calms down. Lots of exercise and mental stimulation will help as well, a tired husky is a happy husky. Be consistent, stick to something. Shoving a toy in his mouth is good during play time. I found I didn't always have a toy on me to do so but when I did, right in her mouth it went. Definitely keep at it. I don't think him sleeping in the bed with you has anything to do with his biting.

Thank you for that thread and the advice. It's very helpful. Last night he slept on the bed from 11-5:30. I took him out for potty came back in and then fed him and back out for potty again. Then it was a 1 1/2 hour play and bite fest. My wife was sleeping so I kept the yelps low but I was definitely putting a toy in his mouth!

My 4 month old puppy does the same thing! He is fine during the day, but in the morning and evening he loves using people/clothes as chew toys. Whenever he starts biting, I say, "NO BITE!" authoritatively and then immediately leave the room and close the door. This seems to be working a little bit, but the real problem arises when I try to take him out to go to the bathroom or for walks.
He will be fine at first, and then out of nowhere he'll start chewing on my pants/calves, and then jumps up to bite at my arms and shirt. I've been reading around on the forums, and the biggest piece of advice is just to turn my back to him and stop, but when I try this he just goes for my legs and doesn't let go! It wasn't painful at first, but now that he's getting bigger, it's becoming a real problem. It's getting to the point where I can't even take him out to exercise because he just doesn't relent. Sorry to hijack your thread, but if anyone has additional advice, I would really appreciate it!

Im having the same problem with kobe he bites really hard and the other day he bit my eye lid. I discipline him or give him a toy but that only works for a couple of minutes. I even bout a sour apple spray. Hopefully as time goes on he stops because my arms hurt.

Good on you for rescuing Finnley!

It might be worth engaging a dog trainer or better still a behaviourist to help you as wounds on you and your wife is not good.

I have no doubt that you will be able to de-progam this behaviour with patience and effort, but sometimes we need the help of a professional to "nip it in the bud" and set the rules.

Best of luck and once again, well done on the rescue... and coming here for help with this issue.

cinnamonbits wrote:

He may have not been left with his littermates and mother long enough to learn bite inhibition. Have you read the thread on that? https://www.itsahuskything.com/t1646-puppy-biting

What worked well for us was yelping and screeching "ow" really loud when she does it, to her it sounded like a littermate and that's how they learn that doing that hurts. Timeouts are good as well, you have to leave the room til he calms down. Lots of exercise and mental stimulation will help as well, a tired husky is a happy husky. Be consistent, stick to something. Shoving a toy in his mouth is good during play time. I found I didn't always have a toy on me to do so but when I did, right in her mouth it went. Definitely keep at it. I don't think him sleeping in the bed with you has anything to do with his biting.

What Ive noticed with the "ow" and the "yelping" is that it seems to excite him more and just gets him going. I think his biting has gotten a little better but it is still quite the problem. When I throw a ball for him in the yard it seems to make him really crazy with the biting. He runs after the ball and then when he comes back to me he will bite my legs or feet. Sometimes he even jumps in the air to try and nip at me. We love him so and we can see a lot of good qualities in him but the biting is a frustrating. My poor wifes arms look like a battlefield.

Yonjuro wrote:

Good on you for rescuing Finnley!

It might be worth engaging a dog trainer or better still a behaviourist to help you as wounds on you and your wife is not good.

I have no doubt that you will be able to de-progam this behaviour with patience and effort, but sometimes we need the help of a professional to "nip it in the bud" and set the rules.

Best of luck and once again, well done on the rescue... and coming here for help with this issue.

Thank you for the response and the words of encouragement. When you say trainer or professional do you mean someone like the trainers at Petsmart or Petco? Ive read some things that they are not real trainers but I dont know that for sure. We are willing to do this though as we love the little terror but he is a challenge.

Hi, I had this exact problem that you are describing. I got Caper at about 5 months and he had no training at all. He would attack me on walks and randomly in the house to the point that people were asking me about the massive black bruises all over my body. I tried EVERYTHING I found on this forum, and advice from trainers at petsmart etc. without success. Every dog is different as far as what works for them, but I'll share what worked for us so far:

For biting in the house - yell "HEY!!!" really sharply and loudly (maybe it sounds like a bark to them?) grab his muzzle shut until he stops struggling, then leave the room immediately. If he continues to try to bite you after you let go, yell and grab on again until he stops, then leave promptly. The muzzle grabbing is the what sealed the deal for us.

Outside the house - pretty much the same, except he gets crazier, bites harder , and is relentless when we are outside so if he doesn't stop after holding the muzzle, I have to use the leash to pull him up and away from my body so he can't get me. This is uncomfortable for him so he eventually gives up... When he wants to play, I redirect him to a toy, but if he is really intent on biting my body, then he gets the leash hanging.

These methods sound really aversive but trust me... I really wished that the positive methods or taste deterrent would have worked instead... this was a last resort, and he hasn't bitten me since. If you can accomplish it with some of the other methods on here try them first.

tsfrance wrote:

Yonjuro wrote:

Good on you for rescuing Finnley!

It might be worth engaging a dog trainer or better still a behaviourist to help you as wounds on you and your wife is not good.

I have no doubt that you will be able to de-progam this behaviour with patience and effort, but sometimes we need the help of a professional to "nip it in the bud" and set the rules.

Best of luck and once again, well done on the rescue... and coming here for help with this issue.

Thank you for the response and the words of encouragement.  When you say trainer or professional do you mean someone like the trainers at Petsmart or Petco?  Ive read some things that they are not real trainers but I dont know that for sure.  We are willing to do this though as we love the little terror but he is a challenge.

I don't know anything about the trainers at the places you have mentioned but they sound like stores so I would doubt that they have the best people there for the job.

Your vet should be able to recommend a good behaviourist near you or hopefully someone here will know someone near you. Good ones do cost a bit of money, but think of the money you will save on plasters for the bite wounds  

Time-outs were what worked for me when I was training Loki. He would bite he would go to time out, he comes out and bites and back to time out he would go. after a few days of this he figured out not to bite so hard and now he knows the gentle command for when he started getting riled up and biting too hard.

Time outs is what is working for us. It is hard, but it has been a couple weeks now and he is doing so much better. The yelping didn't seem to work for us. So now if he bites he gets toy, then warning, then we leave him for 30-60 seconds. Sometimes we have had to repeat this 5 times in a hour. I know it is hard, but keep working with him and it will get better.

Muzzle grabbing, timeouts, redirect, training games and calming training helped me. Mine was a really bad biter. He still does it when he gets really over excited but for the most part has stopped. My arms also looked awful for the first few weeks I had him. With my little guy, the biting would get really bad when he got overly excited or frustrated. He would just jump all over and bite wherever he could. First and foremost for me, I did the timeouts. I would put him in his crate for 10-15 minutes to come back down to a more calm state. I had to figure out what his threshold for excitement was and work to keep him below that, and if he got above it, he went in the crate with something to chew on to come back down. Most people don't recommend using the crate for timeouts, but I really don't have another option, I live in a studio apartment and it's pretty much the only way to separate him from us and I haven't had any residual problems from it. He loves his crate. I had the problem with him getting more excited if I yelped or said ouch as well, he just thought it was the most fun game. For the muzzle grabbing, I only grabbed the top part of his jaw and would push his lips against the sides of his teeth. You have to be super gentle and never, ever do it hard enough to make him bleed. In terms of the redirecting, it really only worked if he wasn't over his threshold and sometimes throwing a toy or bone into the mix just raised the excitement level. That started to work a little better as he's gotten older, now when I use my 'ah ah' command, its more of a gentle reminder and he usually responds pretty quickly. Calming training also worked really well for him, I used a book by Turid Rugass On Talking Terms with Dogs - Calming Signals. It has made an amazing difference for him. For training games, the best one when he was really young was eye contact. I would get some of his food, show him I had it and wait until he made eye contact, then mark and treat. This worked well after working on the calming stuff.

Finally, looking back to the first few weeks, I personally had this idea that I had to 'wear' him out, so I tried to play some high excitement games with him to make that happen. In reality, I think what was happening is that I was winding him up and creating some of the issues myself. If I allowed him to stay calm, kept my voice and myself calm, he was much better about the biting and some other behaviors. Its still a work in progress and he will still mouth sometimes, but its almost always used as a greeting.

Well Finley seems to be getting a little better. He still bites when he is waking up and full of energy or he is outside with me playing fetch and he gets like a crazy man but overall he is better. He has been with us for two weeks now and I can see signs that he views us as his people. Our yard is fairly big and when we cant see him because he went into the side yard, he even comes when called. Potty training seems to be over as he has done quite well with that. Its a day by day thing but it seems to be going pretty well!

That is great news. Seems we all feel kind of helpless for a few weeks with puppies.

I have found something else that has really helped with the little bit of leftover puppy biting that he has left. A water spray bottle. If he even sees the bottle all the biting stops! It sure worked wonders for us.