Maxxs_Mummy said:
...I also used the word, or noise 'Bahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh' like a deep growl when Maxx did anything I didn't like. It mimics the noise made by the mother dog when she is chastising the pups. Doesn't hurt them but they stand back and cock their heads as if to say 'Hmmmmm, naughty!' :lol:
This was the mainstay of my working with zack to redirect behaviors, whatever it was, chewing on my shoe instead of his toy, charging the cat, licking the cat's but, biting my hand, the list goes on. I had read this in a book. the book said to use 'nhaaaaa' but it's the same thing. I had read the book before i brought zack home, so i used it from the beginning. I was quite surprised at how immediately responsive he was to it. I did not expect it to work the way it did. I could say it at a very low volume, i could even say it with a certain warm tongue in cheek tone of voice because the unacceptable behavior was a bit amusing, or he was just so cute, yet, when he heard that growl, he stopped. amazing. Saying the word 'no' did not have that effect. I don't know why it worked so consistently and so decisively. It provided me with a gentle effective way of using my words/voice to manage his behavior. One of the most amazing things was that the growl could be used one time, and he would never do the behavior again! he would never chew that wire again, would never chew my shoe again, would never bite my hand again. There were occasional exceptions, lunging at the cat exuberantly was one. But generally, he would simply give up the behavior that got the "nhaaaa." I was amazed. It seemed too good to be true. i'm very grateful that i had stumbled onto this method. It was not something that caused him to be afraid of me, or which discouraged him from being curious and exploring. It just communicated to him what he needed to know, what was ok and what was not.
Biting my hands was a case in point. I kind of laugh about this example because my own ambivalence about it resulted in mixed messages to zack, and changing policies, which he good naturedly went along with. When i first got him, i was happy to let him bite on my hands, he wasn't a very hard biter, and i'd done this with my other dogs, years ago, and it was fun, to me it was a way of bonding, i'd play with him in a gentle 'rough' way, and he'd bite--he would initiate this, it was the same way he played with other puppies. and i wuold do it to entertain him, it made him very happy, smiling, 'laughing,' and i had never thought of it as a problem. but then, the book i was reading, the one wiht 'nhaaaa,' said that this 'mouthing' shoujld never never never be allowed, and that it was very bad for the relationship between dog and ownder. it wasn't really explained why it was bad. it was assumed to be self evident. I had gotten valuable advice from the book, so i changed my ways with zack and stopped encouraging his play biting on my hands, and when he did it, i softly said 'nhaaaa.' and he looked puzzled and mildly disappointed, but he stopped. after a couple of times, he no longer tried to do it, he would just lick and lay on his back in my arms to be petted, where he used to bite and invite me to play.
this made me sad. :-(
after a while, i decided i wanted to trust my gut feeling that his play biting really wasn't a problem, i didn't understand how it was a problem, it wasn't like he was biting all the time. It was just a play thing, like playing tug of war. so, i started inviting him to play in that way again. and we were both happy doing it.
Then my daughter, age 22 at the time, and her cavalier belle, came to visit for a weekend. i have always been a tomboy, i played with boys a lot, and mimicked the culture of boys who were "rough and tumble", where you don't cry when you skin your knee and you wrestle on the lawn. my daughter was the opposite. So when zack was laying in her lap on his back, and he started play biting with her, the way he does with me, at some point, i heard her complaining about it, "ouch," that hurts, and at first i didn't think anything of it. I didn't think he bites hard--true, if you let him, it can get more hard, but the manner of play involves, on my end, moving my hands in such a way that i don't get hurt. but maybe once in a while, a tooth will hurt a little. i just never minded it. but then, i began to understand that for Lisa, it really hurt and wasn't fun, she didn't like to play in that way, so she was just the passive recipient of being bitten. belle also liked play biting, but Lisa didn't do it with her. Her boyfriend Joe did it with her sometimes and i did. but belle and zack had a great time play biting each other for the whole day.
Anyway, that was when i realized the reason for teaching the dog not to do play biting on peoples' hands. Some people may like it (it was my dad who role modelled it for me with my first dog) but many people will not like it, and those people can get hurt. Lisa cried out and then said zack had actually made a mark on her arm with his teeth. She said it was an accident, he didn't mean to hurt her, he was just playing, but it hurt.
So, i told just her not to let him doing it anymore, tell him 'nhaaaa' and stop him, and after that, i discouraged him from doing it with me--and he complied. He always understood 'nhaaa.'
zack has been so cooperative about that. He's like , "whatever you want me to do , i'll go along with it. feel free to change your mind when you want." he never acted confused.
The way it is now, i still do the play with him and he has learned how to do it in a gentle way, no more accidental hurting someone, he bites very softly and he tries to miss your hand or your skin, he gives a wide birth, and he doesn't bite down with his teeth. so we've worked it out where it's an innocuous thing now. When he was a younger puppy, he could only learn from experience, he wasn't born knowing how hard was too hard.
when i was a kid, i remember my dad doing it with Teddy and i remember watching him, and he would say to Teddy, "Too hard, too hard," and pull his hand back, and then he would go back to playing, and Teddy learned to play gently.
i had a dog that bit my ear once and i had to go to the emergency room and i still have a scar, it was right after Teddy died when i was 14 and we got another puppy, Darin. Darin just got wild and was jumping through the air with his jaws flapping, and i was sitting on the grass crosslegged, and his mouth caught my ear, he didn't mean to, it wasn't more like he didn't know what he was doing.
The woman i got Zack from told me I could try him for three weeks and if it didn't work out, i could have a full refund. She also indicated it wasn't a rigid three weeks,, it could be a little longer, but she just implied that i could have enough time to be sure it was right, that he was the right dog, or that having a dog would work for me. She understood i live in an apartment and can't have barking, and she knew about my cat. When i talked about these things, this was actually before i met zack and was considering another puppy, that's when she said i could take three weeks, she wrote it in an email, and we talked about it too. She said she wanted me to be happy with the dog. And her contract requests that if i cant' keep the dog that she be given first choice to have him back.
