Urgent Help Needed!
 

Good morning friends! I'm a newbie so please forgive me in advance for bringing up problems that I'm sure have already been discussed and dissected before! I have a 13 month old Yorkie named Ricki who incessantly bites and scratches feet, ankles, toes and shins. He is not an aggressive dog and does this purely for attention. Ignoring him is out of the question because it is extremely painful and must be stopped because l live with my Mom who has diabetes and Ricki has often made her feet and legs bleed which is very dangerous to her health. An infection in her legs and/or feet could eventually lead to amputated limbs!!! My Mom can barely walk and has no means of controlling Ricki once he starts nipping and scratching her. Ricki is rarely punished (unless you count ignoring him) l prefer to use positive reinforcement, but in this case, l need something immediate to stop him. I use the loud NO followed by my quieter DON'T TOUCH command while Mom is yelling OWWWWW! He usually pays attention to DON'T TOUCH but not in this case. How do people feel about using a water bottle in this case? I've always been against this method of training considering it harsh punishment, but I'm at my wits end! I've tried rubbing tea tree oil on her feet and legs, I've tried pennies in a can, I've tried time outs - nothing has worked so far! Please help me with your experience because this is my little boy that l love dearly, not having children of my own! But l may have to rehome him if l cannot fix this problem because, of course, l will not put my Mom's health in jeopardy!

Hopefully someone can give you some help with this but I was just wondering if your mom could wear socks and slippers and long pants like jeans to cover her legs until you can get him trained since this is so serious to her health.

A spray bottle worked good for that sort of thing with our puppy. Also, try "yipping" in a high pitched voice. Dogs recognize that noise from when they were with their littlwrmates, which means "owww that hurts!" in dog.

Hope this helps!

I would get a dog behaviourist in to see your dog in action, this can be corrected but with professional help.

My oldest did this and we used the squirt bottle and it worked great.

It actually is common for dogs to grab pants legs and shoes especially young dogs. Callie did this as a puppy and the squirt bottle worked amazing. Honestly if it's not done aggressively there is no need to spend several hundred bucks before trying the squirt bottle.

Positive Reinforcement/Training
 

Welcome to the YT family! You have come to the right place to get answers to hard questions!

I would opt for proper training over punishment. I have raised many Yorkie pups and yes, we have done the "yorkie shuffle" when a pup latches on to a shoe or pants leg. As you mentioned, Ricki is 13 months and the ankle biting is no longer a cute puppy behavior, but a potential health threat to your mom.

Please consider training with positive reinforcement, NOT negative consequences for behavior he has never been taught was wrong in the first place. The problem with Yorkies is that they are so small that minor bad behavior is often ignored and is unintentionally reinforced until there is a big problem in a little dog.

Personally, I am very much opposed to using squirt bottles. It is aggressive and disrespectful and totally uncalled for - especially in a dog that hasn't been given the benefits of proper training with positive reinforcement. If he has actually been trained to NOT be an ankle biter and had a relapse, well even then I would opt for other methods that were not negative.

Ricki needs to be given opportunity to learn his behavior is not acceptable. I would strongly advise to keep Ricki away from your mom until he is properly trained to avoid injury to your mom and to stop reinforcing bad behavior in Ricki.

Clicker training/conditioning works wonders. You can teach Ricki that walking around your feet without touching them will get a reward in the way of a tasty treat. If you are consistent with training/treating he will soon learn that NOT being an ankle biter is better.

Training with positive reinforcement will give you the opportunity to build a stronger relationship with Ricki, rather than give him a reason to fear negative responses from you.

Corina, if you opt for positive reinforcement training I would gladly do all I can to help you come up with ideas specific to your situation. Perhaps others can come up with other positive reinforcement ideas as well.

PLEASE don't give up on Ricki. There is a fix through positive reinforcement training. It may take some trial and error - remember training is simply two way communication - we communicate through words and dogs through body language. The biggest problem with training is simply learning to communicate on a level that both human and dog can understand and are comfortable with.

OP's mother is a diabetic, the 13 month old pup is now a danger to the mom, action must be taken quickly or he will be rehomed. When Cody was in obedence training the trainer used the spray bottle on him,it made him worse, aggresive when he wasn't an aggressive dog. If it were my mother with this condition, I would have had a dog behaviourist in already and in training.

Yes, yes, yes

We did positive training with Callie and the only thing that work for us was the water water bottle with the feet and pants biting. I find the water bottle is not hugely negative and works very well with out hurting any dogs or humans. A lot of people use a can of coins to and that in my opinion is pretty much the same thing. Research also shows the coin method can cause dogs to fear loud noises so I think the water bottle is perfectly safe and ok. Sometimes it becomes a last resort and because not everything works the same for every dog. Biting feet can can become a life or death situation for a small dog or even the human that is biting. I really don't see the water bottle as being negative. Real negative training is hitting, rubbing noses in pee, using choke collars and so on and a water bottle posses no harm to the dog lime other things that are actually considered negative training.

There are ways to use the squirt bottle and ways not to. Like every training method it is about how you are doing it and it can become a negative tool if not used properly. I heard one women say a trainer would squirt her dog when it would not do what the trainer was wanting and in that case it was not the proper way to use it. I don't see the use for a spray bottle in obedience training. Everything was tried with Callie and she would bite every ones pants and shoes and even on the stairs so it became a very dangerous situation so we opted to try the squirt bottle and it worked great. It is only used at this point when the two little ones get to rough when rough housing but most of the times unless its really bad I redirect them into a sit and look and so on. All tools can be used wrong and be dangerous or cause problems but you can use a squirt bottle in a proper way. I personally would try that first before shelling out a lot of money for a behaviorist which cost even more then trainers but that's my opinion and I don't have a lot of extra money right now where I could do that kind of stuff unless it were a last ditch thing.

Taylor, we all have different levels of training experience and abilities. Just because you needed to use a squirt bottle to teach Callie certain things, doesn't mean that others here at YT can't offer better/different solutions. If that is where your training skill set lies, then by all means use spray bottles on your dogs. In return, I would ask that you respect those of us who have more advanced training techniques and skills that don't require the use of negative reinforcement.

I want to help my critters learn the correct responses through their trial and error. I want learning to be fun for both of us and more importantly I want my furred and feathered family members to look forward to training sessions and learning. Teaching a tiny yorkie to not pull on pants legs or be an ankle biter surely doesn't require a huge human to aim a weapon (squirt bottle) and fire away.

I have to disagree that it's a negative training method and feel it's very wrong to compair it to a gun. I only used it with Callie for the pants and shoe bitting and I did not just "fire away" I squirted her one time and said no and it only was necessary a few times. It was also a very dangerous situation and almost killed my grandfather. I am very upset that you are trying to paint me as some awful person because I used a squirt bottle. I have put lots of time in training Callie and all but that one thing was done using positive training and she knows many commands and tricks and even has trick dog titles. My boy Joey and me do lots of training as well he too has multiple trick training titles. Penny is a work in progress but I do positive training with her as well. This painting me evil or even a unknowledgeable trainer is just wrong and proves you don't know me at all. I'm not an evil person because I used a water bottle. I would die for my dogs, they are my babies. I also want to say that anyone that has had to use it for the same situation is not evil either but I'm sure that with the condemning of it that they won't speak up. My Yorkie's also are not tiny but you should remember that because you didn't want to make a harness for Callie who is 18 pounds.

An apology and an offer
 

Taylor - I apologize if my last post seemed a bit harsh. I just get frustrated when people resort to "quick fixes" with training. I know that most of us have our dog's best interests at heart and we do the best we can with the skills and resources we have.

Corina, I would love to help you find a positive reinforcement type solution to Ricki's ankle biting problem. Please PM me if you are interested in swapping some ideas that may help you with his training.