Hi!! I have a 15 week old choccie labrador, we have had her from 8 weeks old. I appreciate that mouthing comes with pup but she has been more nippy and even biting to where she pierces the skin. I am doing everything thats advised like yelping, giving a chew toy, isolation, rewarding good behaviour, etc. However, I have three children and they are getting abit scared of her. They are well behaved around her and keep their arms down and try to walk nicely past her but she still will try to chew them. I am now keeping them seperate to an extent and making sure I supervise when they are together. What I want to know is if this is quite normal for a family with a pup, is there hope it will get better and if anyone has any other suggestions. I love our new pup to bits and its not all bad, I think she could be well-behaved when trained but then I am not prepared for my children to be at risk either??

It might be worth getting a trainer to come out to you? We have 2 children and are picking up our puppy at the weekend, so I am hoping we won't have the same problems. Good luck!

sounds like your pup is getting over exited wit all the new family.a pup communicates with the only means it can its mouth.it will with your help learn limits.dont panic.i have a 4yr old gsd his favourite passtime is to mouth me but he knows only to mouth me

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Absolutely normal, and something that can take puppy owners by surprise with Labs. What people often forget is they are bred to use their mouths, funnily enough, I see mouthing issues a lot more with pet/show bred Labs, than working Labs, who don't seem to mouth as much as pups, but are the ones that eventually get out and do *the stuff*. As there are very few working bred Labs, I'm guessing yours is a pet/show bred pup, if you wanted to pm me the parents I may be able to find a little more out about them for you.

You need to have a separate area which you already seem to have done, where the pup can be away from your children on their own. The best way, by far to get your pup and kids interacting, is to take them to puppy training classes, and get them involved with how to act and behave around a young pup. It's all too tempting to wind a pup up without even realising that's what you're doing, and then when it all gets too much suddenly the pup is an out of control monster.

It does get better, but only with consistent training. Also worth mentioning is what type of food you've got her on, as that can affect behaviour. Just like kids, colourants and additives can make a pup hyper, a good quality food can help alleviate those type of problems

Hi there, my 1st most important thing to say is it WILL stop, I promise you!
I was like WHAT THE HELL HAVE WE DONE for the 1st 3 months of having our black lab, I would go as far to say I didnt even like him!! he used to bite, snap, try to bite my face! in fact he caught my nose once and had me in tears! I thought he was awful, AND I could totally see why people give their dogs up.....

Its all about training training training..... classes are good and as you have been doing making noise when she mouths... I had to stand and turn back, leave room, yelp (this seemed to drive him more mad) all kinds of things, not sure which one worked now as I did so many things. But one thing that worked a TREAT was a water spray bottle. He used to 'attack' me when I ate so a few sqirts of this bottle, and he stopped.... I only used this for really bad behaviour tho....

I never realise Lab pups are a NIGHTMARE! until we got one, I was like 'these dogs look after blind people!!!! how come this one is a sh*t!'

anyhoo, I know its hard, I really do, but it will get better, stick with it as I SWEAR once they get over it they are the most amazing dogs EVER! mine is 8 months, yes he has selective hearing, and NEVER 'leaves' when I ask him to, but he is still 'work in progress' and I would never in a million years be without him now. He is my best friend

That will be because that puppy will have under gone 18 months training with at least two people to teach it basics, manners, and then the more advanced stuff

A common misconception, they're not chosen because they're easy as pups, but because they have the potential for learning that means as adults they make superb assistance dogs

as it has been said, it does get better! Izzy is slowly getting over her nipping phase during playing, but it has transferred into her greetings instead! We taught her not to jump up when greeting people so the only way she can get her excitement out is to put your hand in her mouth, obviously

how old are your children? I know someone who got a new puppy and they have a couple of boys (6 and 3 I think) who he used to nip all the time, despite their best efforts to teach him not to. What the owners didn't realise was that when the boys walked past the pup while he was sleeping or lying down they would give him a kick, most probably out of revenge for any nasty nips they'd received earlier in the day. They aren't bad boys, they just didn't understand what they were doing was wrong, and I'm pretty sure that was setting them back a hell of a lot with training! I'm not suggesting your kids are doing anything like that, I'm just saying that if young ones ever have unsupervised access to a dog (even walking past them in the kitchen etc) then anything could actually be happening!

Needless to say when the owner found out what the boys were doing, they got a bloody good kick up the bum themselves!

the only actual suggestion i have is to make sure whatever technique you use is actually working on your pup. we tried the yelping trick with izzy but she seemed to decide our hand was actually a squeaky toy and nipping it brought out this amazing noise! We tried walking out of the room and ignoring her but she would follow us, and if we closed the door then her favourite toy, the door stop, was suddenly available for chewing so she was actually getting rewarded for chasing us out the room!! Eventually we got a system where we would say no and trade her for a chew toy as a first warning, then if she went back to the hand she got a 30 second timeout in the kitchen. If she came back out and did it again, it became a 1m timeout and so on until she got the idea. Next play session it would start again with the swap, then timeouts. She eventually got it!

a final point is don't get disheartened. in a similar way to how you never notice them growing because you see them every day, you probably wont notice any changes until you are playing a few months later and it suddenly dawns on you that she doesn't seem to nip anymore!

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We have a 4 month old golden retriever and will admit to being in tears a good few times during the first 3 months as she constantly nipped me.
I looked like I was self harming with the amount of bruises and stratches on my arms and legs. She also ripped lots of my clothes with her teeth and I tried all the usual methods to stop her but she was relentless. I tried to avoid her being around our son when she was tired as thats when she was at her worst and discouraged tug type games
Then gradually over the last 3-4 weeks the nips changed to more gently mouthing then to very little mouthing at all She still mouthes my clothes usually when she sees me first thing in the morning but does eventually respond to "leave it" and I am finally bruise free
We have still got a long way to go with training and shel still has her moments but it is getting better so hang in there

Thank you for your replies, that has put my mind at rest! thanks especially to Vickieb, glad to know all you said, cos I do look at her sometimes and think I really don't like you!! I will keep up all the training, we do go to puppy classes and hopefully will begin to see some change at some point. I know I felt the other day she was seeming better then had a really bad day with her yesterday!! Thanks : again x

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