Hello! I'm new to this forum, and I basically came here because my dog has been driving me crazy with his biting. I should have nipped it in the bud when I first got him, but I think I was conflicted about which training methods to use, and so I only learned about what is probably the "correct" way when it seemed to be too late.
I have a 9 month old italian greyhound, and like all italian greyhounds, he has limitless energy. Sometimes this means that he will simply not sleep when he's supposed to, usually because he's much more interested in following me around the apartment. He'll get into this cranky, tired mood where he just won't stop biting me, and it really hurts. He'll grab onto my hands, my arms, my clothes, and then he'll snap at my face.
I tried in the past, and am now trying again to yelp and leave when he bites too hard, bu the doesn't respond to the yelp. So I end up having to extract my hand so that I can finally ignore him for a minute to teach him that it's not appropriate to bite me. I originally gave up on this a while ago because, like I said, I was conflicted about which method was best, and this seemed to be going nowhere.
Instead of yelping, I sometimes try calming him down, because I know he's sleepy, by holding him tightly against my chest, but he's all legs and very difficult to restrain. So he can still nip me pretty hard no matter what position I have him in. He's extremely flexible.
Three days ago, I finally got fed up, got a hold of Ian Dunbar's books and decided "I"m going to do it this way, and I'm just going to be consistent about it." Unfortunately, he puts a lot of emphasis on doing this training at an early age, and he gives very little information on how to deal with a dog that already has no idea how hard to bite and is set on biting too damn hard. Nevertheless, I've been consistently leaving the room when my dog starts biting me, and have seen no decrease in his biting habit in the last three days.
I'm wondering if any of you have successfully trained a bitey puppy bite inhibition this late into the puppyhood.
One thing I haven't done yet is actually doing the bite inhibition exercises where I reward him for mouthing softly. I mean, I reward him verbally when he does it, but the problem is that if he's already in a gentle mood, he'll never attack me if a treat has suddenly entered the picture, and if he's in a bitey mood, I can't get him calm enough to give him a treat. Should I actually be giving him treats for biting me hard, but not so hard that I scream?
I would really appreciate any advice you have. Thanks!
