Aggressive Play?

[koalathebear]

So you ended up using a water spray bottle? Where you using this just for when he was nipping at your legs or for when he was being naughty in general. I prefer the redirection idea but then it doesn't seem that the pup learns that the previous behavior was wrong, even though you have redirected to a better behavior. Was it between the 14 - 17 week mark you used the spray bottle?

From memory, it stopped the behaviour almost immediately so we would have started using it around the 16-17 week mark. People say that you have to spray and then hide the bottle so that the dog doesn't know that you are spraying him - with Elbie it didn't seem to matter. Some people don't like to use aversives but it was the only thing that extinguished the mouthing in Elbie. For other things, tethering him or time outs worked fine. We've used for two other things - attacking the leash on walks and barking in the car. We really only use it as a last resort to tell Elbie "we are serious - stop it!" Hoover has never needed the spray bottle - simple verbal corrections worked with him because he's very sensitive to being reprimanded.

Haha. Archie is like this too at the moment. I always have a toy. I also have this puppy bitter stuff I spray on my hands but it doesn't seem to worry Archie. :p

Elbie used to lick the bitter stuff - it didn't bother him at all.

Edited April 5, 2011 by koalathebear