Hi everyone!

Trying to get some advice for training my husky to not put everything in his mouth including my hands. My Husky likes to playfully gnaw on my hands, rip the hair off of my newfoundland dog  , and chew anything he can get a hold of.  

In December of last year (he was five months old at the time), he ripped and ate so much hair off the newf that he ended up with a bowel obstruction. We didn't notice he was doing this until then as our very patient newf did not even flinch while this going on. Of course we became very aware after he had to have a gastrectomy and a huge wod of dog hair was removed from his intestines.

The other issues is of him gnawing on everyone's hands. He never bites, just likes to have our hands in his mouth. Tell him no, he stops, and starts again in a matter of seconds. He is relentless.

He is extremely smart and I'm hoping this is something I can train him out of doing. Any advice would greatly be appreciated.

Son's dog was notorious for gnawing on hands.  Success it's pretty much an invitation to play and to pay attention to him, what I did was make him sit at the first hint of gnawing.  When he sat, I then petted and praised him.  If he did not sit, I turned my back and held my hand to my chest.  Once he was calmer, and responded to sit, he again got petting and praise.  I also used a hand signal, arm outstretched, palm forward as in stop, along with verbal warning "eh eh eh."  The purpose of all this was to only give the dog what he wanted, ie play, when he gave me what I wanted...a calm, non gnawing dog.  Took a while, but consistency over time, he came around.

We have a wooly and I  swear Archer thinks Ami is a chew toy!  (Look at this month's hisky of the month)

Thanks for the great advice. I will definitely give that a try!

Oh by the way, your huskies are beautiful

FLHuskyLuv wrote:

Oh by the way, your huskies are beautiful

Thank you...they are a constant delight. And a handful

The black one is actually my son's dog - Archer stays with us when son has to be out of town for work. He's a field engineer so he's out of town a lot...I consider we have 1.5 Full time equivalents. Enough to keep both of them mostly worn out but not enough that Mom doesn't get a break from all the commotion...and lately, the whole filling

I hear you. Ours is not a year old yet and we've already had to invest in lots of fill dirt. Gave up on trying to lay sod again lol