Hello All

My partner and I recently got our first Husky, I had wanted one for years but I was traveling a lot for work and we were living in small apartment in London we relocated back to Ireland and I am currently taking some time out from work and thought it was the ideal time get our puppy as I could spend time bonding and start basic training.

she was fantastic for the first few days apart from the crying a bit during the first few nights crate training. But the last few days she has started biting a lot and quite hard yesterday was particularly bad to the point where I tried using dominant techniques which included alpha roll and gave her a bite on the ear. This didn't seem to cure anything and she appears allot less affectionate towards me now. In addition she does not respond when we try to prevent other ill behavior.

We have been changing her food gradually to Orijen LB puppy, I guess my question is have I lost the dogs trust with the training methods applied and has anyone had similar experience. I did try other methods like timeout, "no", giving a yelp when she bit before any of the other things. I also have a dog trainer coming for home visit on wednesday to give my partner and I some tips.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated as I feel awful and do want to do right by the dog. Right now she does not seem so much like our adorable puppy in our home at least.

cheers
col

Welcome.

How old is she? Luna is biting and she's only 10 weeks old. We tried Time out and she managed to escape from the room. We are currently redirecting her nipping to a toy so she can understanding human biting hurts.

I would like to see pictures

She is coming up on 10 weeks, there was biting at the start but no problems it was what I had with previous pups, but the las two days it is in hyperdrive and to be honest seems almost aggressive behavior. But it is at home when we take her out and she sees strangers and kids she turns into a softy and resumes her playful puppy behavior .

20120819_140534.jpg

sorry I don't seem to be able to upload an image but there is one here

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=502610340297&set=a.502610335307.172.260600001&type=1&theater

From my understand Husky play rough with each other, not to sure if the same goes for human. Did the breeder warn you about her behavior when you went to pick her up? The breeder told me all about her behaviors so we already know what we will be getting into.

I would look in the Training forum, i'm sure someone posted something similar to the problem you having. We have the best trainer in this forum;) and also look at local trainers near you. We want to train Luna put she need to be 4 months first.

She's beautiful!

Most of us who have had young puppies have dealt with this, I can tell you Aaron and I have holes in clothes to prove it. There are a few different approaches, and you might have to try different ones since dogs respond differently to different methods. Read through this sticky and you should be able to find something that will help. The age the dog was taken away from it's mom will really affect biting as well, since they learn bite inhibition and socialization from their mom and siblings between 6 and 8 weeks. If that's the case, it may be harder (but not impossible) to correct the problem. Good luck, I know how horrible the biting can be.

thanks for the support, we got her at 8 weeks old. i'm sure the trainer we have recruited will benefit both us and the dog.

She is a cutie! Welcome to the forum. As you've noticed, alpha rolls and other punishment-based approaches don't help you build a relationship with your husky, and also (certainly the alpha roll) is based on outdated theory about dogs.

Positive reinforcement training is the way to go - reward her with a treat, some petting, or a game when she does things that you like or that you ask for. A lot of bad behaviours will simply go away if you ignore them; or for some things you can redirect the behaviour, e.g. if she is chewing on something, redirect her to chew on one of her chew toys instead.

Great post from Meredith about the puppy biting too.

There is a free training textbook by Ian Dunbar here that you might find useful. What's especially helpful about this one is that it includes great advice on puppy development and the importance of socialization at an early age, including advice on how to prioritize that socialization.

Good luck with your puppy! She's adorable.

Hello All

as mentioned we had a trainer visit us at our home to give us some advice on how to stop our puppy (Arya) from biting us during play.

we were provided with some really great advice which seems to be working, we are really enforcing the "leave it" command and when that doesn't work we separate ourselves from the puppy by going into another room or placing her outside. This does sometimes need to be repeated several times during a session before she gets it.

when we are out in a park where we cannot enter another room we just shutdown play and look away. Thankfully the trainer was impressed with the work and training we had already done, I know allot of this info is already present in other post but the trainer really showed us how to put it to use and make it effective.

she will be a bit of work but she is worth it, Thanks for all the replies,
Col