Barnaby is now 5 months old, the first four months of which he was quite a cockerdile.
Giving him feedback to excessive bite pressure by yelping and this was effective. More effective still was to pull a paw or ear into his mouth, in place of our hands -forearms when he was getting too excited, that gave him direct and personal feedback of the pain he was inflicting and he pretty much stopped at that time. As I write this, it occurs to me that his painful play biting reduced also at the same time that he started being alowed out on longer walks...longer walks on which he encountered other, much older dogs, some of whom gave him an occasional nip to repremand him for excessive enthusiasm when thez played together. This was especially the case with our neighbour´s GSD who was and remains very parental to him. So, who kows if he learned the lesson from self-feedback or from the village pack.
Either way we then had a period of much appreciated calm, in which his biting was totally attenuated to what my dear old mum terms mumbling :-)
Over the last fortnight he's been losing his baby teeth and adult teeth are of course coming through. Coming through amazingly quickly actually. Biting has returned as part of the teething instinct, but this time his teeth are bigger but less razor-edged. On the other hand, his jaws are much stronger, and he no longer desists at either a yelp from us, nor the paw in mouth tactic that seemed to work so well first time around. This time, what is working is ending playtime together immediately play biting starts.
I think the biggest problem is that each dog is different in its behaviour, and as such there is not necessarilz a hard and fast one siye fits all solution to any particular training issue. All we can do is listen to others whove been down the path before us and have found solutions that work for their particular dogs.
Good luck and I hope your wounds heal quickly
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