Hello everyone. I'm new here and would gladly appreciate it if you'd help me out! I've got a 3 month old male husky that I've had since he was 6weeks. He's developed a really bad habit of biting. He will jump on the couch and bite everyone. My parents. Brother. Sister. Anyone who comes in the house. He doesn't growl but he will bite really hard. My arms are really scratched up because of him. I've tries yelping. Saying ouch. Telling him no. making a barrier. It's getting really frustrating!
Also when going on walks he has the tendency of biting his leash or wanting to jump and play with everyone who walks by. I don't know what to do anymore

Well, you have a little demon fluff ball right now, lol.....On the serious side of it, your boy is probably teething, and going through this terrible age of not understanding how hard he is biting. Most huskies go through it. There is a huge sticky in the training section that goes through various ways of dealing with this. Personally I dealt with it in a time out fashion, as soon as my girl started and she didn't respond to my ouch or yelps, I calmly walked away, and left her where she was safe and away from me. Once she was calm I would come back. Others tackled the problem different ways.

I will add, training is everything. Leash training and obedience training will tire him out. Practice walking at a heel, practice sit, lay down, etc. 15 to 20 minutes of this will calm him down some. In the house I would tether him to you, if he is around others, practice lay down, a winner for me is "be good", don't allow excessive freedom at such a young age, no getting on the couch for example until he is a calm slightly older pup. Get a lot of chews and bones and redirect the nibbling of hands to the chew. Praise when he is good, if you use treats give him a little treat, I personally prefer telling your dog good boy and a shoulder rub. Responding in a positive manner and touching him will form a bond. Once he is older and quite surprisingly at around a year old, he will understand not to bite so hard. Mouthing is a normal thing for a puppy, it is a form of communicating. He was taken from his litter mates at a young age, he should have stayed at the breeders until he was at least 8 weeks old, those 2 weeks plays an important role in a puppies development, as in puppies play rough and bite if bit too hard the other puppy will cry/yelp, and give the understanding to the biter not to do so in a hard/hurtful manner. I hope I helped some. Remember, he is not doing this as a sign of aggression, it is a sign of a puppy doing what puppies do.

Mouthing is a huge, expected problem in a pup of your age, especially, as Renee says, one removed from the litter before 8 weeks.

When we first got my boy, he was 12 months (ish) and was really mouthy. I tried the yelp, ouch and No in loud voice and found that, rather than stop the behavior, it excited him (as if I was a squeeky toy ) and made him more unmanageable. What worked for me was just turning around and walking away from the play.

With a puppy as young as yours, that might not work - my experience with my son's pup, which was adopted at 4 mos of age, is that he was a relentless ball of energy that would just follow and escalate his behavior in an attempt to re-engage the play. So for your guy, timeout may need to be more formal as in a place where he is contained - but NOT his crate! His crate needs to be a positive experience. Maybe a bathroom, laundry room, basement, spare bedroom - but I would suggest a place with not much in it that he can destroy! Also - at 3 months of age, the time out should be short - just long enough for him to chill out a bit. Make it abrupt - when he mouths, a quick, matter of fact, no-no-no, pick him up and put him wherever your time out is - or lead him there with a leash - you could even train a place where you sternly point a finger after the no-no-no (again, not loud, just quietly firm if he gets excited by the loud voice.)

Once he starts to get the hang of "no play when mouthing" you can try what I do with my son's pup (now 14 mos old) (I started this, oh maybe 3-4 mos ago, little brat was ALWAYS grabbing my hands as soon as I put on my work gloves ) I make him sit by holding onto his collar and pushing down on his rump. Once he is sitting and not mouthing, I scratch his ears, rub his back, coo to him. He loves the attention - now, instead of mouthing, grabbing my gloves, sleeves, pantlegs whatever, he comes running up, nudges me with his nose to get his attention. (He is what my husband calls "NLF" - Needy Little F...I just call him high maintenance )

Again, to reiterate what Renee has said - this is not aggression (though it feels like it when those pointy little teeth sink into skin). You can search "mouthing" for more hints - just about everyone has gone through this stage.

This is from a blog post I actually wrote earlier today, and when I saw this thread, it reminded me of this.

I'm going to go against the grain here and say that the best thing you can do for any problem puppy behavior is to view it as a normal bump in the road of development and instead of reacting and trying to 'train' it out of them, create a calm and loving household with limits to set them up for success. Understand that puppies have frustrating phases and let them go through them and grow out of them. Rules and boundaries are essential, but 'fixing' a puppy is not.

The knee jerk response (and seemingly common sense response) generally seems to say that it's crucial to stop this when they are little, because it won't be cute when they are adults.

I suggest we look at it in a different light. Puppies use their mouths to explore the world and bond with their families. A puppy biting a family member/owner is communication. When Dizzy was a puppy, he would actually use teeth on skin to ask to go outside. It took me several times (and a lot of frustration and even some tears) to realize that right before he would have an accident, he would become very mouthy with me. He was trying to say, "hey lady, gotta go, gotta go!"

So, let's approach this in a new way. What's the real issue? How do we solve it? and most importantly, how can I set my puppy up for success? The real issue here is that he needs to go outside, and he needs to learn how to ask to go outside. At this age (about 9 weeks to 5 months) his primary way of learning about the world is with his mouth and teeth. Instead of trying to battle nature, I'm simply going to increase the frequency I take him outside. I'm also going to pay closer attention to signals he may give before he resorts to chewing on my arm, and I'm going to restrict his freedom to a smaller part of the house, or a crate if I can't keep a close eye on him. None of these things directly address biting, but they all address the cause of the biting.

How about another example of puppy biting: sometimes when playing, my puppy gets really excited and starts biting me. With our new approach, we ask; 1) what's the real issue? 2) How do we solve the real issue? 3) How do we set the puppy up for success?

1) The real issue is over-excitement and over-stimulation.
2) We can solve this pretty easily, don't play the game that caused the over-excitement. Have the willpower to resist the adorable demon.
3) Say we continue to play that game knowing that the puppy gets so excited they start biting, then we correct the biting, what do you think will happen? We are creating a pattern of play leading to over-arousal, until the owner seemingly decides to end the game and get mad. A puppy, or even an adult dog, can't process this and just views the owner as unstable and unpredictable, especially during play. In the end, this is going to create a lot of anxiety, and a much bigger issue down the road. So, back to answering our question, how do we set the puppy up for success? Don't play that game. Period. In fact, if the puppy has a very excitable temperament, you may not be able to play at all during certain stages. Dizzy would get so wild and mouthy that for about 2 months, I did not initiate or acknowledge any play. As soon as I stopped play, he stopped biting. This doesn't mean you can't have fun and bond with your puppy, it just means you have to do it in a way that creates stability for them, and accepts their limitations during different developmental stages.

I absolutely love puppies, and not only because they are so cute (although that never hurts), but because they are so open and innocent to the world. They experience things through us and if we accept their nature and help them grow through these stages we can create a calm and balanced adult companion. So, let's use our big brains and hearts to do this for them. Set your puppy up to be the dog you want. Many times, our puppies become great dogs, not because of us, but in spite of us.

try to feed him holding a bowl in yourhands...So thathe knows you got a feeding hands and this might help so he wont bite you no more