Ripped to shreds

[rippedtoshreds]

Puppy advice please.
We have a springer. Got her at 8 weeks and now she’s 13 weeks.
She’s settled in pretty well, sleeping midnight til 6.30, has had someone home with her pretty much solid since we got her. She’ll settle in her crate in the day time.
She’s eating fine, playing fine etc.
The problem is the bloody biting. It’s horrific. From 6.30am until bed at midnight she just bites, pounces, attacks.
She jumps up for affection and as soon as you pick her up she’s ripping your hair out, or puncturing your hands and arms, even biting noses and faces.
You only have to walk from one side of the room to the other and she’s hanging off your trousers growling or off my shoe laces or slippers.
Every single person who’s come to visit her has puncture wounds in their hands.
The kids are covered in scratches, little bite marks, their clothes are ripped and this is literally happening when walking from the lounge to the toilet. They are separated by stairs gates the entire rest of the time.
If I want the kids to come in the kitchen for lunch then I have to pick them up over the stair gate and carry them to their chairs or they get attacked and bitten on their legs. The whole time the dog is hanging off my jeans biting me while I’m carrying the kids.
We put her in her crate for a minute to calm down, but as soon as she comes out she’s attacking again.
My parents are desperately worried that we’ve got an aggressive dog around the kids, even though she’s only 13 weeks old.

She’s from a registered breeder and is pedigree.
She can’t go out yet as hasn’t had all of her jabs, but I play with her in the garden chucking a ball for 15 minute spells. If anything this ramps up the aggression and she’ll come in all wound up and attack even more.
We take her for car rides and to meet friends dogs which wears her out slightly.
Evenings are the worst. She almost goes into a frenzied attack and we will be sat on the sofa and she’ll just fly through the air at you and basically attack you.
If something has scared her then she’ll attack too.
My LO bought a balloon home from a party. The dog saw it on the other side of the room, started barking manically and then just ran around in a frenzy biting everyone.
I’ve had experience of puppies before, but have never experienced such a bitey aggressive puppy.
Please tell me this is normal for springers and she’ll grow out of it?
I’m so worried that she’ll be an aggressive dog.

Your dog needs to be out and about even if it is you carrying her to get her used to things. If you miss this crucial socialisation period then you will have a whole new set of problems. Pups are bitey but do get past it Ian Dunbar’s article the bite stops here is worth a read.

Persevere and be consistent and you will get through it.

So for the first time in 5 weeks we just went out and left her in her crate for a sleep.
We got some fresh air and quality time with the kids and we’ve come back to a chilled out dog.
Not a single bite in 15 minutes and we usually get bitten every few seconds.
Genuinely think she just needs quiet time on her own and not to have everyone revolving around her.
Felt awful leaving her, but she was still sleeping when we got home so obviously needs it!

And, bit of a mini break through.
She jumped up at the little one and bit his leg. We removed her to the hallway and shut the door, only for 20 seconds. When we let her back in she didn’t jump up again. So maybe being consistent with putting her out each time will help.
Mouthing adults is one thing, but hanging off of small children’s trousers is another.

Puppies mouth, OP, and they have super-sharp teeth.

It hurts. A lot, and often - and for often, I mean, all the time 😱

Long sleeves for everyone, thick jeans. My daughters & i we’re constantly shredded.

Our puppy is 9 months now - grew out of it around 5 months, i would say.

Occupy the puppy. Even if it can’t go out for a walk, you can take him out and about (carry him) to get used to noise. Do training in the garden. Get a sniffle mat, hide food in it. Get a kong. Throw a ball.

Just remind yourselves; puppies hurt. He sounds normal - be persistent & you’ll get through it.

I haven’t started training yet, as we are starting puppy classes soon and I don’t want to teach something an entirely different way to the trainer and then confuse the poor dog!
But I’ve seen those snuffle mats. They look good.
We do kong every evening too stuffed with treats and kong cheese.
Will try and freeze some carrots.
And yep hopefully this stage too shall pass!

I think the biting is normal. Horrific. But normal.

Really concerned you aren’t taking her out.
The fear period is 8 - 12 weeks, it’s vital they get socialised between this time period else they can become fearful and sometimes aggressive.
In your arms if you don’t feel you can put her on the ground.

Snuffle mats are great, OP.

Puppies sniffing Is a form of exercise for them.. is he fed on kibble? If so, make feeding him a game.. hide some in the snuffle mat... hide some around the room for him to find.. sit down on the floor with him, and feed him a piece a at a time on the floor.

The puppy training should teach sit / stay / lie
Down in a standard way, so you could google that and get your children to practice with the puppy.

Treats, treats, treats are the order of the day with training... have some teeny teeny pieces of chicken or hotdog sausage, and play : persevere.

You will get through it. We were literally scratched & shredded when our lab was little.

I could have written your post with our Ddog. Definitely had the puppy blues! We did consistent ‘time out’ with him every time his mouth touched anyone and loads of time for him to be calm. It worked really well and now at 4 months he rarely goes to bite and when he does it is usually because he is overexcited. We bought an antler as suggested plus loads of soft toys and a KONG. There is a fantastic Facebook site called ‘dog training advice and support’ it has brilliant articles on all kinds of issues and will answer specific questions as well. I wish we had found it earlier.

She's wildly over stimulated. She needs enforced rest.

Also, use a soft house lead- it doesn't matter if she chews at it, she'll lose interest after a while. You ne3d to be able to grab it when she starts up, so you can lead her out/move her to her crate/distract her in a more positive way.

Don’t take it so personally! She’s a puppy, puppies bite! They also tend to bite children more because they are smaller, they run around and they squeale...just like puppies!

For the people asking about socialising her, we are trying our best. We do car journeys a few times a week, she’s met a friends dog, another friends cat and we’ve held her to look at some chickens. Didn’t put her on the floor though, as no vaccines and lots of rats by the chickens.
I’ve carried her round the block and she’s been to relatives houses (hard when she wees on their floor though)
She’s got a puppy party booked and dog training.
Perhaps a dog friendly pub may be a thought though.
Be so much easier when she’s had all of her jabs.

You’ll be fine, you’ve got all the right things in place it’s just a bit overwhelming at the moment.

Don’t worry about mixed training techniques it’s good to start even on the basics and all training these days is about bribery with snacks and will get his brain working. You can message the trainer and ask if they’ve any suggestions to get you started.

OP, sounds like you are doing the right things. With every puppy I have had, I would happily have given them back in the first month as although they are gorgeous and smell divine, puppies are horrible. Stick at it and you will get a great dog.

I really relate to this. I was so down about our puppy for the first few months and covered in bites, scratches etc... We all dreaded coming down in the mornings and trying to get any peace at all in the evenings. One to one training helped ours, but most of all it was time and consistency. Over the stair gate on his on for a minute or so every time he bit worked and also back turning, no attention as others have said. It took time but got the message eventually. Also try these:

Ours wasn’t interested in kongs or most toys but loved chewing at treats in an old sock tied at the top. He loved this and it kept him busy.
Swaddling in an old blanket to calm him down.
Snuffle mat lined with yoghurt.
Kids wore wellies in the house for a while to protect their feet.
Socialisation with inoculated dogs.

Ours is now a calm, beautiful, gentle dog. We love him to death but really didn’t for the first few months.

Our dog was also very smelly for a while even after a bath. Turned out the poor thing had a UTI.

Your dog sounds bored stiff and this is manifesting itself as bad behaviour

Ok so you can't take her out for walks but you can do mental exercise, basic training and obedience - make her think, use her growing skills, tire her out

I would really recommend you get a qualified behaviourist in now before it gets any worse because you don't sound knowledgeable enough or equipped to deal with this

m.facebook.com/groups/374160792599484?ref=share

Lots of great advice and files on puppy biting and play.

Sounds like our boy was as a puppy, he is now 2 years old and still a handful but a million times better than he was. We like you got him from 8 weeks from a good breeder pedigree with all paperwork. He is a black Labrador from a working line, our mistake is that we had never had a working dog, he went to puppy classes and even tried some 1 to 1, his behaviour was at his worst at 5 months, we couldn't walk eventhough we knew tiring him out was probably going to help, he was more focused on jumping up and biting us than actually bloody walking.
Eventually we looked into gun dog training, he isn't actually going to work but we thought gun dogs are well behaved and listen to their owners. He went away for 5 weeks, and i would be lying if I said be came back anywhere near gun dog behaviour, but he came back actually listening to us. Sounds to me like your puppy is full of beans and gets very excited and with that comes biting- I don't think your puppy is going to be an aggressive dog! It sounds like play, pup needs to learn it's not acceptable play. Understandably you can't take pup on walks outside yet but training with treats tires them out massively especially at this age.
If the biteing behaviour starts, a very firm NO! And removing attention/stopping play works very well, but you will need to repeat this a lot.
I think I went wrong with ours early on by being way too soft in my tone, because I was worried about making him nasty which resulted in him being terrible xx

Just in the garden and she must have nipped the kids clothes 20 times. Every single time we’ve put her back inside for 30 seconds.
She just doesn’t seem to be getting it.
She’s even now growling and biting us when we are picking her up to go in time out.
Think they’ll just have to use the garden separately won’t they.

Then rather then picking her up you all go inside so she's outside for a while.

Remember it isn't just about making it boring but also about recognising when things are getting too exciting. If your children are loud like children are and are playing this is going to make the puppy excited.

She just doesn’t seem to be getting it. She’s even now growling and biting us when we are picking her up to go in time out.

Also this is a marathon not a sprint. Training takes time and consistency to do so you can't expect it to work instantly.

I really think you should get a good 1-1 trainer in to help all the family come up with a consistent approach and to help you understand how to manage the puppy stage. I know you said you are familiar with puppies but it doesn't sound like you have had to manage a typical bitey bouncy one before so it's nothing negative to get in some outside help which lots of us have done.

Go slightly longer on the time out, with billypup the TO was designed to calm her down, 30 seconds isn't really long enough to stop the heart and adrenaline pumping.

Use a soft lead so you don't need to pick her up. And yes, she and the children should play at different times! Playful children are too exciting for puppies!

Agree with billybagpuss on the time as I missed the 30 seconds bit. I used to use a stop watch and time 3-5 mins depending on how long I knew he needed to calm down. As he got older this reduced to 1 minute as he could calm himself down better.

Now as an adult if he is totally worked up he takes himself off and calms himself down without me doing anything.

Ok. All taken on board.
I’ve had a few pups in the past, but I think the difference is that we got them pre kids.
Our old dog was 7 when the kids were born and was great with kids at that age.
Just not had to deal with the kids constantly getting bitten by a dog before.
Will deffo put the lead on actually as that’s a really good idea to lead her away. I’m going to do that in preparation for her witching hour later, as when she attacks we can just lead her into the hall.
And yes we could have all come in and left her out there I suppose.
She’s inside now anyway while the kids are outside and she’s chilling with a whimzee chew so is a lot calmer.

No advice but my Springer is 6 months old and still doing the same

If you use a lead make sure you use a treat to lure her away rather than dragging her away. The dragging teaches the dog to resist and pull back. Without a treat she may well try to eat the lead as well.