Dominance Aggression and Excessive Nipping

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Mercurykitty
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Joined: Sun Aug 29, 2010 8:59 am
Location: Newark, DE

Dominance Aggression and Excessive Nipping

Post by Mercurykitty »

Our thirteen week old Cockapoo is showing signs of what could be dominance aggression. Whenever we attempt to correct her, tell her "no" when she's pulling at the curtains for example, she'll bark at us and then go back to what she's doing. If we try to physically move her away from the problem, she'll nip. If we trying to correct her when she starts nipping, she'll bite harder. She also has a habit of barking and growling at the cat because she wants him to play with her (She actually brings him toys and then gets annoyed that he doesn't respond) and nipping us when she wants us to play. Cesar's alpha pinning method backfires every time and just leads to her lunging and nipping when we let her back up.

Nipping is another big problem. I've tried distracting her with toys and treats, yelping and yelling "oww!", and walking away. The later is more fun for her, because she's also fond of chasing and nipping shoes, ankles, and pant legs. I'm so desperate to get it to stop that I even tried the butter method described in the "Dogs 101: Puppies" special, where you rub butter on your skin to encourage licking instead of biting. Not only was it gross, she went back to biting as soon as the butter was gone.

Any suggestions to help correct either problem would be greatly appreciated.
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Lauram
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Joined: Fri Mar 05, 2010 5:59 am

Re: Dominance Aggression and Excessive Nipping

Post by Lauram »

A thirteen week puppy that bites is not showing aggression or any signs of dominance. It would be like saying that a tiny baby that cries is trying to dominate a household. Please please erase any ideas of alpha pinning and any simialr rubbish from your training program, it will do far more harm than good and instead of "correcting" your dog you will end up frightening and confusing her. She is not trying to dominate you so even if you subscribe to Ceasars out of date and utterly nonesense methods you are misreading the situation and even by his system it is not appropriate to alpha roll a 13 week old puppy. Would you pin a baby to the floor and expect it to understand why? A mother with puppies does not alpha roll them, to continue this way of training you will do serious damage to your dog. At thirteen weeks she has no comprehension of what is acceptable and what isn't, whats right and whats wrong. Like a blank canvass.

Puppies nip, they all do it and it hurts like hell because of their needle teeth, like you said its fun to chase legs and bite feet. When your puppy is barking and "growling" at your cat it is trying to entice it to play, the best thing that could happen is your cat could swipe her if she gets to boisterous.

Instead of telling your pup "No" when she's doing something you find unacceptable try to distract her with something you would like her to do. So replace pulling curtains with pulling on a toy, our pups used to love a puppy 'raggy' its like a small fabric knotted thing.

You will get loads of help on here, so please erase all notions of dominance from your mind.
Zeldacorgi
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Re: Dominance Aggression and Excessive Nipping

Post by Zeldacorgi »

Mercurykitty wrote:Our thirteen week old Cockapoo is showing signs of what could be dominance aggression. Whenever we attempt to correct her, tell her "no" when she's pulling at the curtains for example, she'll bark at us and then go back to what she's doing. If we try to physically move her away from the problem, she'll nip. If we trying to correct her when she starts nipping, she'll bite harder. She also has a habit of barking and growling at the cat because she wants him to play with her (She actually brings him toys and then gets annoyed that he doesn't respond) and nipping us when she wants us to play. Cesar's alpha pinning method backfires every time and just leads to her lunging and nipping when we let her back up.

Nipping is another big problem. I've tried distracting her with toys and treats, yelping and yelling "oww!", and walking away. The later is more fun for her, because she's also fond of chasing and nipping shoes, ankles, and pant legs. I'm so desperate to get it to stop that I even tried the butter method described in the "Dogs 101: Puppies" special, where you rub butter on your skin to encourage licking instead of biting. Not only was it gross, she went back to biting as soon as the butter was gone.

Any suggestions to help correct either problem would be greatly appreciated.
Your puppy is NOT, I repeat with bold caps, NOT showing signs of dominance. She is showing signs of being a puppy. Stop alpha rolling her right now, unless you want to raise a dog that becomes insecure and possibly aggressive. This is an extremely flawed training method with dangerous consequences. IGNORE DOMINANCE-BASED TRAINING. So here's a few tips for your situation:

1) Your puppy doesn't know what 'no' means. So instead of constantly shouting corrections at her, why not eliminate the need for corrections? If she's grabbing at the curtains (which to a puppy is just a giant tug toy), why not pin them up so they're out of her reach? Give her a tug toy instead. The more you set her up for success, the less you'll need to correct her. Set her up for success, and give her less opportunity to practice naughty behavior.

2)Keep her separated from the cats for now. Cats are fun! They run fast, make funny noises, and some of their body language can be interpreted as "I'm ready to play."

3) Puppies nip. Some harder and more often than others. If you removing yourself isn't working, try removing her instead. Put her in the bathroom (usually a boring room in the house) for 7-10 seconds. Everytime she nips, she goes immediately into the bathroom for a time out. For the first few days, you'll be up and down, back and forth. But she should start to get the message. It'll take time though.

What kind of training are you doing with her at the moment?
emmabeth
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Re: Dominance Aggression and Excessive Nipping

Post by emmabeth »

In addition to the above very excellent advice..

Your puppy NEEDS to bite and chew and rag, to learn about bite pressure, to learn about how to control her jaws, to strengthen her jaws and allow her adult teeth to come through.

What outlets are you providing her with to exercise this need? Raggy rope toys? Kong toys with food in them? Large raw meaty bones? Large raw whole vegetables?

Provide all of the above, select toys with different weights, textures etc and make sure you have a good selection, rotate them daily so she doesnt have the same ones every day and play with her with them where appropriate. Use soft toys and rope toys to pre-empt her need to go for the curtains and redirect her to rag and pull on these instead.

Use time outs where and when you miss the opportunity to redirect, both for harder than is acceptable contact on skin, and for pestering cats too.

Forget alpha,. dominance, alpha rolling, pinning or anything related to it - you have a perfectly normal puppy!
West Midlands based 1-2-1 Training & Behaviour Canine Consultant
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Mercurykitty
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Re: Dominance Aggression and Excessive Nipping

Post by Mercurykitty »

As far as toys are concerned, she has three Nylabone Puppy/Teething toys (the pacifier, the small key ring, and the wolf sized bone), a Nylabone Adult toy (the princess DuraChew bone), a Puppy Kong, a Puppy Kong Teething Stick, a Kong Puppy Wubba, a Kong AirDog Squeaker Dumbbell, a Spot Mini Skinneeez Fox, a 12" Loofa Dog, a 7" Chilly Bone, a mini tennis ball, a generic stuffed bone, a generic rope frisbee, an old hand towel, and a 6" Bully Stick that gets replaced once a week when it gets down to 3" or so. She also had a knotted rope toy for a few days but we ended up taking it away after finding out that our vet doesn't approve of them. Right now, all of the toys are in an open bin on the floor where she has easy access.

Exercise is a bit difficult at the moment. Our vet told us she is to have no contact with any other dogs until after she completes the puppy series shots (next month) and our neighborhood is full of dogs. Outside time is limited to walking around the yard on the leash, and even that is difficult because she'd rather stop and sniff the grass or pull toward any human she sees (she's VERY social). We can not attempt off-leash play because she has not yet mastered "come". Inside, we play fetch with the tennis ball and tug-of-war with most of the other toys. She's also quite fond of chasing the cat and our feet whenever we move from place to place.

She desperately wants to play with the cat, but he has no interest whatsoever in her. He's a bit of a loner and doesn't even like the company of other cats. She'll bring him toys and then bark when he doesn't want to play. When she gets to close, he'll swat at her. He's managed to smack her in the head a few times (he came to us declawed), cat language for 'back off', but she thinks he's playing and now tries to smack him back. He has bit her once, a light warning since there was no blood, but she still hasn't gotten the hint. I would love to keep them isolated from each other, but my boyfriend refuses to keep his precious cat locked up and the stupid thing hops over the baby gates into the dogs areas on his own. I'm just happy she doesn't have any food aggression problems, because he loves stealing her food.

We had been trying to relocate her to the "safe room" (the one totally puppy-proof room where she can be unsupervised) whenever she'd bite, but since her toys are also mainly located in the same room, the punishment wasn't very effective. She'd cry for a few minutes, and then go play with her toys. A short stay in bathroom may be a better option.
jacksdad
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Re: Dominance Aggression and Excessive Nipping

Post by jacksdad »

is your yard fenced in? If so, perfect place to start working on recall. There is a great thread about recall training here viewtopic.php?f=20&t=7155

But since you have a puppy, teaching recall through play is also a great way to go. chase and "hid n' seek" are two I use with my dog and they are actually stronger then my verbal recall. Both started in the house with no distractions.

For chase, pretty self explanatory. I just make it fun for my dog to chase me. for hid n' seek, I step behind a chair, door, into a partially closed closet and call my dog to find me. Outside the house, I might use a tree, car, dumpster etc. I can generally always see him, but he doesn't always see me from my perspective, but has to use his nose/ears to find me.

As for sniffing while out on walks, let your dog sniff. great mental exercise and allows your dog to gain knowledge of the world around them. You can of course work towards a sniff on cue so that you walk for a while in a nice loose lead or even heel, then reward your dog with some free time to sniff etc. your dog will love your for the sniff and free time.

as for timeouts, emmabeth has a great explanation around here somewhere for using timeouts. the nut shell explanation is, for timeouts to work you have to keep them short. 10 -15 seconds. any longer they don't work. timeouts can be putting your dog into a room by it's self for 10-15 second or removing your self from the dog for 10-15 seconds. she can explain better then I how to use timeouts and how to not make timeout into a game for your dog. but if your putting your dog into a room on time out for more then a few seconds, that is why they aren't working.
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leslie123
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Re: Dominance Aggression and Excessive Nipping

Post by leslie123 »

My puppy Sulley is about 14wks now. I just wanted to let you know that you are not alone, and I'm going through the very same behavior with my pup. They can really be a handful at times! It is normal puppy stuff and believe me I understand how tiring it is to have to be on constant watch. I've come to LOVE when he crashes for a nap! I also have two cats who really don't want to play with Sulley either. He does the same thing as yours.. brings them toys, play bows, play barks, but of course they don't read "doggy". The other issue is that my pup is a large breed and seems to grow daily so I know the cats are wondering why are we bringing in a bigger dog every day?? :lol: He is now twice their size, but a month ago he was about equal to them. I'm trying to let the cats and Sulley work it out on their own as much as possible. Occasionally I just take one or both in my bedroom and play and pet them away from the dog. We also purchased a new cat tree for them yesterday with some higher levels on it. (In the cat world, height is everything) When he just gets too wound up and bouncing and flailing those long awkward legs all around them we leash him up and bring him close to us. He tends to calm down within a few mins and then I might do a short amount of training with sit, down or watch me. By this time his focus is usually completely off the cats and he'll settle enough to sit and chew on something or fall asleep. Sounds like you've got lots of really fun toys for your pup too! Someone may have said this already, but not giving him free access to all the toys every day is so helpful! If you pick them up and rotate them by giving him 2 or 3 new ones everyday he will find that newness factor in them every time. My puppy also LOVES chewing on ice cubes along with batting them around on the tile floor. I'm just passing on good advice that I've been given and learned here and from Victoria's book and show. I'm glad you found this forum and I look forward to seeing how both our pups do as they grow. Btw, your puppy is soo adorable!
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Mattie
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Re: Dominance Aggression and Excessive Nipping

Post by Mattie »

Dominance aggression is the handler using aggression to solve an aggressive problem with a dog so DOGS CANNOT BE DOMINANT AGGRESSIVE, it is the handler that is.

Have a look at viewtopic.php?f=20&t=1981, it will give you an idea of what to expect from your puppy at various ages.
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