Stop Puppy Biting & Mouthing using Positive Reinforcement

4 min readApr 17, 2021

Positive Reinforcement:

Positive Reinforcement is the Training Method that uses different rewards to do different actions. Positive Reinforcement is also used as a form of escaping the punishment when the dog does an action that you didn’t like.

So basically, if you use Positive Reinforcement, you will have a well-behaved dog, while also keeping the spirit of that dog.

We should not forget that dogs, especially puppies, do some actions naturally and without the intention to make house damage or even less to make us angry.

Puppy biting

Just like human babies, puppies are born with no teeth. Their first set of baby teeth, or milk teeth, grow between 3 and 4 weeks of age. When your puppy is around 4–5 months old, these teeth will fall out to make room for their permanent set of adult teeth.

Puppies like to explore the world, taste new things, sniff new things and they do this kind of exploration by putting things in their mouth.

Teething and Nipping

Puppies’ mouths are filled with 28 tiny, razor-sharp teeth that seem to be attracted to nipping at your fingers and toes. Although an annoying behavior, this is completely normal for teething puppies and something you can train away.

The teething process is very uncomfortable for a puppy and our job as dog lovers and owners is to help our buds to provide solutions that can help them get through this process more easily.

How to Stop Puppy Biting using Positive Reinforcement?

Toys

Get them toys. As much as possible, with different textures and different shapes. Because if the pup doesn’t have many toys around, he eventually will get bored from that toy and will start to explore new things like chewing on shoes, on couches, and even your hand and toes.

Yelp

Yelping is a completely natural habit for puppies. You’ll see that when puppies play around that if one puppy bites the other one too hard, he will eventually yelp to let the other puppy know that “Hey, this is too hard”.

We can do the same thing too, the instant you feel your puppy’s teeth touch you, give a high-pitched yelp: “Ouch, that hurt”. So in this way, the puppy will know that they are eventually hurting you and it is a sign to stop from this habit.

Stop the Fun

Who loves more playing with you than puppies themselves.

So what do I mean by stopping the fun?

Puppies usually bite your hand when you are playing with them, or just petting them. So the next time you go and play with your pup and if he starts to bite you, use the yelping method, give a high-pitched yelp, and stop playing. Ignore the puppy for around 30 seconds — 1minute, and go back to them to play again. Repeat this process serval times, in this way the puppy nows ‘Biting stops the fun’.

Catching the right moment

A huge factor of dog training is catching the dog at the right moment while he is doing a bad habit.

Never punish your dog in any way, if you get back from work and you see that he chewed on the couch or dropped something from the table. He may have done that action hours before, and if you punish him right when you come home, he will definitely not know why you just punished him.

In this way, you will cause stress, confusion, and sadness to your pup.

Be sure that if you want to stop a puppy from a habit, try to catch him doing that, so for example if you catch him chewing on couches, give him his favorite chewing toy, then reward him for stopping that habit. In this way, he will know that biting is acceptable, but only for certain things.

Personal Experience

I also had the puppy biting issue. Various from the different breeds, puppy biting can be harder or easier. I have a Golden Retriever puppy, he didn’t bite as much as other puppies, but anyway he also had this problem that sometimes did get hurtful.

The Yelp Technique worked well for me, Teo isn’t biting that much anymore, and now he already knows how much is ‘too hard’.