How to Break a 7-Month-Old Puppy From Nipping

You may find your dog to be a great addition to your life, or you may it to be a drain on your effort and time. A large part of your reaction to that dog, however, will be due to its training, and you will have the ability to train it to act in desirable ways and to avoid acting in undesirable ways such as nipping. Behavioral psychologists offer several ways to teach a dog. You only have to learn them.

Things You'll Need

  • Spray bottle
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Instructions

    • 1

      Squirt the dog with water immediately after each nip. This is a form of punishment, the pairing of a behavior with an undesirable consequence in order to discourage it. The squirt bottle is not the only means of offering negative conditioning, though. A smack on the nose with a rolled up newspaper has traditionally served many dog-owners well. A dog trainer may, however, want to be careful using punishment. The dog may renew nipping in its absence.

    • 2

      Offer the dog some fun activity such as playing a game, but stop the dog from that action immediately after a nip and refuse to play with it for the remainder of the day. This would be a form of positive reinforcement, the use of a reward for a behavior as a means to encourage that behavior, but your ending of the game would demonstrate to the dog the consequence of his nips. Continuing to deprive it of the activity for a day makes the consequence clinching. Under this means of training, a dog may begin to generalize the failure to nip to situations other than playing and may ultimately stop nipping entirely, according to the Theory of Operant Conditioning.

    • 3

      Reward the dog for not nipping for a period of time. To do this, you will need to monitor the dog to determine the strength of its desire for various things, and then use those things as a reward for not nipping. In the beginning of training, you may want to reward the dog fairly constantly in order to make the relationship between the reward and its refusal to bite clear to it, however you will ultimately want to reward the dog randomly. A reward given at random intervals will actually discourage nipping more strongly than a more consistent system of reward.