What Can I Do to Make My Puppy Stop Nipping My Hands?
We all love puppies. They are so cute and cuddly. They are the closest thing to perpetual love machines that we could possibly imagine. Because of that, we love to play with them. We pick them up, give them hugs, play with their little paws, give them kisses, and allow them to do just about anything they want.
It is so cute to watch them chase the ball that we have rolled under the chair at the far end of the room. Seeing them bark at the leaves floating outside the back window never gets old. Feeding them by hand and letting them lick our fingers is just the best. Once they finally get their little bark, we find that so cute. They will bark at us, and we will make funny little whining sounds back at them.
It is always so much fun to play hide and seek with them. Well, it really isn’t “hide and seek”, it usually is “Where am I?, Where am I?, Where am I?”, and as soon as our puppy looks at us, we jump up and down and run off, hoping that they will chase us.
As long as we are having fun and mutually engaging with our little puppy, these are really fun activities. The problem arises when we decide we are done and need to work on the computer, answer our phone, read a book, have dinner, or go to bed. We turned our “off switch”, but nobody told our puppy to turn off their “off switch”. On top of that, what were all the “things we were teaching our puppy” while we were mutually going nuts?
The answer is “Probably not all good stuff”. Some of this “not all good stuff” is often nipping.
How can we interact with our puppy and not have him nip? It all is based around proper communication and focused behavior. Robin and I have a great dog training article that explains all of this. Please read our dog training blog titled “What Can I Do to Make My Puppy Stop Nipping My Hands”.
