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Originally Posted by FirstYorkie EvilSoma, you don't say how old your Yorkie is, but what you describe sounds like VERY normal puppy behavior. Please understand that puppies are teething and they NEED to chew.
When your puppy bites you, give him something appropirate to chew on. When he bites you hard enough to hurt, yelp or say "Uh Uh" loudly. Break eye contact and move away from him. As soon as he stops trying to bite, all is forgiven; start over. In this manner, besides teaching him not to bite, you teach him "bite inhibition". (Here is what that means. All dogs when sufficiently stressed will bite. It is a fact of life. Dogs who have been taught "bite inhibition" know that there are varying levels of biting - some less severe than others).
The jury is still out on playing tug-of-war. Some trainers say "no, never". Some say it is fine. Use your judgement depending on YOUR dog. |
Great advice the only difference I do is that if their teeth even brush across the skin to where you can feel it but it does not hurt to yelp. This will teach them to have any even softer mouth and in the event of him getting hurt and reacting by biting it will not hurt because he was taught that humans are super sensitive and even the slightest bit could hurt us.
As far as tug of war games, this is my honest opinion. You don't want it to be the game you play most and you have to watch it when you play. You can still play just limit it a bit. When they are playing tug of war they are challenging you so if you let them win all of the time then they will think they are the dominant one and will make biting and everything else worse. So you can play, just make sure that 9 times out of 10 that you win, which should not be hard with a small dog. Its really bad in bigger dogs because they can overpower you and they will win more than you will.
