Hi fellow husky owners,

I got my first 9 week old husky puppy last wednesday. He's just amazing except for one thing.

When we start to play he is very gently but after we play for a couple of minutes he is getting pretty rough. He is biting my jeans and is shaking his head like dogs do to kill their prey.

I've tried to redirect him with food when he's getting all fired up but he doesn't even notice.

Maybe you can help me.

Thanks

This is pretty normal. Its a puppy. But ur doing good on trying to redirect him. Keep working on it. Stay consistent. Dont give in sometims and let him play like that. If he does just stop the play session right then and there and try again later.

Thanks for your replay Ericobeasto. I will keep working on it.

Eric is right on.

You have to be careful with how you provoke them at this age because they can not cognitively know right from wrong in the way that they can when they are older.

It's usually best not to rough house with them too much at this age as they are getting more comfortable with you and learning that you are in control and calling the shots.

I play rough with my 10 month old but it only started a couple of months ago and the idea is that the only time I allow teeth-on-skin is if I am down on all fours and clearly playing in this way.

Huskies are rough and mouthy and you have to respect their nature, so it's one of those things where "if you play with fire...". Teaching them no-teeth-on-skin or bite inhibition is going to be one of the most difficult life lessons you'll teach the pup. It's best to not create more chances for trouble yourself.

Calmness is in my opinion the thing to focus on most right now. When your pup's a teenager everything will start to unravel and proceed backwards so best to start off as far ahead as possible

Good luck and get some pics up!

Welcome to the forum.

You got awesome advice already.
Know your puppy. When you think he's about to get too riled up, stop and take a second to calm down. Redirecting is great, but if you can teach him to check himself and setting him up for success that's even better in my opinion.
I'll give you an example. My girl would always get really excited and kiss/nip at my face when I got home from school. Kissing is awesome. Nipping my face, less so. I knew she was going to do it, instead of redirecting after she did it, or telling her "no" and doing the ignore technique, I'd have a toy ready, and catch her mouth with it as she jumped for me. Then she got all sorts of welcome home loves. Now, right out of the crate she'll grab a toy and shove that in my face rather than attack my face with love nips.
Just know what he's up to and act before he can mess up.
Redirecting is great, we did plenty of that for other things too. With redirecting, just make sure you're not accidentally rewarding him for rough play. Sometimes, and I know I've caught myself doing it, we train/reinforce one behavior when we're trying to nip another one in the bud.

yes thank you all for you great advice.

I've got another another tip from someone else that proved to be working and I would like to know your opinions about it.

When he starts to get to rough I'll do a high squeaky noise like another puppy would do to tell him that's hurting. And this is actually working he stops immediately.

Yeah, that a pretty common trick for bite inhibition. If it's working for him, that's great. Keep it up!

Our Doppler been through it and he doesn't learn fast through. Loud yelp sometimes doesn't bother him so we leave him in a room for like 30 seconds routine whenever he doesn't behave and it slowly works for a week. Pups will outgrow it, you just have to be consistent.

That is completely normal, it is a puppy and Huskys have a more rough playstyle than most other dogs.
What you are doing about it sounds good, but make sure that if he gets rougher than you want him to be, stop playing and go away, you can make a noise too so that he thinks that you got hurt. This should help so that he understands that he can´t play that way.

altho this is normal for a puppy, we have restricted Boudreaux's rough play to outside in the yard. and he is commanded to "be nice" inside. he actually adopted this command over "settle" or "settle down".
whatever works. but he is developing quite good inside manners. we do spend time with him outside to expend this rough play energy. he also knows the difference between "inside" and "outside toys"

he really wants to be a good boy inside now, but when he wants to play with his pull rope he will come get our attention and show us the back door. or the leash for a walk. he has his moments when he is slow to obey as if he is saying "Hrmm. let me check my itinerary and see if what you want me to do, fits my schedule for the day" what a personality he has. he does check often to make sure that what I am commanding is really what I want him to do. LOL I try to be conssistant with him, but it is sometimes hard to be commanding when your laffing your butt off.

Once he gets older, doggy day care can do wonders, I guess the other dogs teach them better play manners than we humans can

I'm going to take him to puppy kindergarten very soon. I hope that he learns to play like a lab there.

I also have problems to end the game because he will then go after the furniture instead.

Puppy Kindergarden/Welpengruppen are never bad. If he will play like a Lab later depends on his charakter. But in generel you decided to get a Husky, so don´t want him to be different right form the start.

For the furniture problem he needs to learn the meaning of the command no/nein.
Important is consequence, don´t let him play games with you.

Inuk wrote:

I'm going to take him to puppy kindergarten very soon. I hope that he learns to play like a lab there.

I also have problems to end the game because he will then go after the furniture instead.

Puppy kindergarten is great! The other puppies will help you socialize and work on bite inhibition. Is there an older, respect dog that your puppy could play with occasionally too? Older dogs who play nicely can help you teach your puppy to play nicely. I can't promise he'll play like a Lab (Labs are rough players too!) but playing with other nice dogs helps him develop good doggy manners.

When you remove yourself after puppy has been nippy, be sure to offer him a toy. He should have a bit more interest in a stuffed Kong or flavored Nylabone than the couch! At least, you'd hope. Huskies are picky little guys but man... that furniture always seems to taste good!

Hahaha play like a lab!! I'm laughing because I have a lab puppy and she plays just as rough as Karli does and she's only 9 weeks old (almost ten weeks.) You can hear her jaws snapping as they play. And she barks!

The idea of timeout is to put him in a room that he can't go after stuff, away from you and all the fun. A bathroom is a good place for this. He doesn't need to be in there long, just long enough to calm down.

Having a lab myself, I laughed pretty hard at the play like a lab comment too. When mine was younger, he was only allowed to play outside for fear he would destroy the whole house. Unlike my husky which can play inside as he isn't as bad.

Having him play with other dogs will help him too both energy wise and to learn what isn't acceptable.