We've had our 14-week-old puppy for almost four weeks now and it's all going well. He's slept 8 hours in his crate since the first night home with no whimpering; toilet training is pretty sorted with only the odd accident when he's got excited around visitors and we've taken our eye off the ball; he's learned some commands like Sit and Down with lots of enthusiasm and recall is reallly progressing. He's lovely on the whole.
However .. his bitiness has really increased recently.
He's chomping like mad on metal chair legs and the edge of his bed as well as the usual Kongs and antlers and Yak bars so I'm sure there's teething going on.
Some of the bitiness is definitely him trying to play too. I'll be tickling his tummy and he'll be reaching down trying to mouth my hand. There's no aggression there. In that case I stop playing, move away for a short time and return and start to play again, leave when he tries to mouth my hand, rinse and repeat. That's fine.
What I'm not happy about is he's now protesting when we put his harness on to go out (for frequent toileting) and twisting round trying to nip our hands. We can't calmly remove ourselves from that situation as obviously he needs to go out regularly. Similarly when we come in and I want to wipe his paws on an old towel (it's very wet here at the moment and garden a bit muddy). I've started to scatter a few small treats to distract him while I wipe his paws and it's a race to get that done before we get into a wrestling match. I'm not sure if that's the right approach though.
Nipping is definitely worse in the couple of crazy hours in the evening when he's getting overtired but not yet able to settle. Last night for the first time when I got hold of him to stop him getting something off the side table (usually he'll lie on the sofa late evening and not bother what else is around) he twisted round to try to nip me in protest and that was an unwelcome first. Mornings are much better and late evening he's normally pretty placid too.
The breeder provided a couple of pages of printed advice when we picked him up, and her view was that to stop nipping we should tap him with a rolled up newspaper, not to hurt but just to startle enough to stop the behaviour. That didn't feel right to us and we haven't ever done it .. and the nipping wasn't a problem until this last week.
I'd really like to solve this before it progresses into something trickier. Or will he naturally grow out of it when his teething sorts itself out? He's a lovely pup and at the moment is curled up in his bed very happily.