Wild Bear Puppy mouthing...

[Beth]

Kuma is the BIGGEST love bug, has been quick to learn the rules of our house and is fitting in nicely with one exception…she LOVES to puppy mouth.  We are relentless in our consistency with trying to make her stop and have used several different methods in regard to it…but she is bull headed about it.  She was the most dominate and outgoing in her liter and it obviously shows in certain things she does…the puppy biting being one of negatives of them.

Last night she got SO wired and out of control with playing VERY ROUGH that I had to actually put her down in an Alpha-thing (To calm her) which I never thought I would do to her.  She kicked, screamed, barked and pouted for almost five minutes before she settled down and submitted to me! 

Did anyone else have this problem?  Please tell me that it will eventually click in her little fat stubborn head that this is unacceptable play with us!

[Mom2Sadie]

Yup, Sadie did that too. She still does it to my cats every once in a while but they let her have it when they've had enough. The only thing that worked for me was yelping whenever she made even the slightest contact with her mouth and then ignoring her. And that took a long time to work, but it did eventually. She doesn't do it much anymore. Actually when she was starting to get it sometimes she would look up at me and open her mouth like she was thinking about mouthing and I could just give her a look and she'd lick me instead. It was very cute. In a sort of annoying way

[chaos270]

Kali pretty much grew out of it but she'll still mouth us occasionally. She mainly does it when she gets hyper and is on her back.  She gets pinned regularly because she's so dominant with everything and I highly recommend it because Kali gets extremely pushy and needs to be taken down a peg.  I bet Kuma will be the same.  I had to make her submit to her cat the other day because she was being a brat.

[Beth]

Oh heavens…I am SO glad to hear this in regard to Kali being pinned too! You have no idea what a relief this is to hear…I thought I was a monster for doing it! 

I have all these visions of “soft”, sweet, doe-eyed big babies (Which Kuma is 90% of the time) and really hated doing it but good lord she is a very strong willed thing!  And I was shocked the fuss she pitched!  She kicked, screamed, barked…she fought until the end. I have had Rottie's that gave up and in faster!

BUT…she was calmer when we were FINALLY done with it. 

[chaos270]

Kali was the same way she put up a fuss and still does sometimes....b ut having two dominant dogs in our house it's important they both submit otherwise there'd be alot more trouble.�  You should stick with it though, they do get too big for their britches and don't realize their size esp the dominant females it seems.  Just be careful to protect her joints as you roll her and you'll end up with a good tool to calm her.  Also you can block the action by distracting her before she gets totally into it so watch "the Dog Whisperer" if you get the chance on the National Geographic Channel.

[DixieSugarBear]

I have had to alpha roll all three of my pyrs. It's funny but I think they really like knowing you are boss.  That is after it is done. I may have to give Dixie another turn, she want to run full out and do the chest crash thing with me she does with Sugar Bear, NOT! Most of the time I just step out of the way, but if you are not watching your are in for a big crash.  Hey maybe for her the wreck tumble was fun, she has only been doing it since them.  Just what I need a 100 lbs girl that want to body slam with me no less .

Lisa

[chaos270]

Kali does the Newfie launch at my dad (her grandpa) when he won't take her out to play soccer aka chase me to get the ball.�  She does ask first by barking at him.�  She also likes to launch herself across the room onto the couch it doesn't matter who's sitting there...so I've gotten crushed.�  We also have a funny video where I was videotaping her playing in the snow and all of a sudden I couldn't see her and she ran right into me and got me in the knees so I fell on my butt.

[Beth]

I LOVE watching The Dog Whisperer.  I don’t always agree with everything he does…but I do think he is very good and especially good with aggressive dogs.

Did anyone see the episode on just the other night where he was trying to help the cute little blond girl with the Chinese Crested dogs…and he COULD NOT get a word in!!  It was pretty funny.

Kuma LOVES to run into you (Body slam???) and that’s been a real struggle with my children.  I have two teens who LOVE when she does that and think it is SO funny.  However…I also have a 3 year old that could get really hurt so I have to really put my foot down with the teens and how they play with Kuma.  In fact, Kuma was so out of control hyper last night after my husband and I had been out for an hour and she was left with my 15 year old daughter.  I have a feeling they were “rough housing”.  I really had to talk with my daughter last night about this being totally unacceptable if Kuma is going to be a nice, calm and obedient member of our family. 

[Mom2Sadie]

Sadie also does the "flying leap across the room" bodyslam. I am in the process of teaching her to "settle" and it's helping a lot. It was ok when she was 13 pounds, but now at almost 50 pounds, it's the opposite of ok. When she's being a psycho I make her lay down and stroke her and in a very calm voice I say "settle". She usually fights me for a minute or two but then she does calm down. She's a weirdo.

[Boyle]

My Nola was a maniac as a puppy (truthfully, he still is a maniac  ).  If he wasn't sleeping, he was gnawing on us.  It was like being the owner of an alligator.  What really helped us was teaching the beast bite inhibition.  Here is a great link on teaching bite inhibition http://www.jersey.net/~mountaindog/berner1/bitestop.htm
and you should check out the Yahoo group "Camp Naughtydog".  The moderator, Virginia, is very knowledgeable about puppy behavior and training.  Also, MastiffWeb has some great information on bite inhibition http://www.mastiffweb.com/cgi/webdiskusjon/hoved.pl?df=4326&meldID=7216&hID=7216.  If it can work for a mastiff, it should work for a newfie!

I cannot find the links but I read a number of articles on why a person should not do the alpha roll and how it can backfire if you continually use it on a dog.  I will keep looking to see if I can find those.

Good luck.

[Tspanos]

It was ok when she was 13 pounds, but now at almost 50 pounds, it's the opposite of ok.

Your little girl seams to be catching up on her growing no wonder she's been sore. You need to really get some pics up, say before she weighs 75#s.

[Mom2Sadie]

It was ok when she was 13 pounds, but now at almost 50 pounds, it's the opposite of ok.

Your little girl seams to be catching up on her growing no wonder she's been sore. You need to really get some pics up, say before she weighs 75#s.

She is catching up in terms of weight but she still looks so small to me. I have a feeling she's going to be very petite, but I could be wrong. Right now her back legs are so much bigger than her front legs that when she sits down she looks like the Hunchback of Notre Dame.

[Winslow 151]

Hi,

Winslow is still mouthing me, not Dawn just me. It is definately a play thing. He doesn't really bite, he just grabs. We have debated the inhibition thing, and when he gets too mouthy I do settle him down. We plan to start water training this spring so he does need to understand what is acceptable mouthing. It is a breed trait so don't be too tough on breaking the habit.

[Tspanos]

I will take a newf's mouthing over an ausie's people hearding any day. When you walk into our house Lacey feels your one of her sheep, mind you we don't have sheep. It can be very annoying but it is a breed trait as Rich stated and it also has a proper time and place that is the distition you ideally want to make.  Tim