Mouthing and Nipping
Nipping is the playful biting that puppies indulge in, it is the harmless mouthing and nipping of your hands and clothes that they resort to when they play with you. This can also be found in older dogs that have not been trained with proper bite inhibition.
Mouthing and Nipping is a natural instinct. Puppies use their mouths to touch, to hold to communicate, to interact, and mouthing or nipping should not be misconstrued or taken as aggression.
They learn from their mothers, their siblings and members of their social pack on how not to cause harm with their mouthing and nipping. It is the natural bite inhibition that puppies learn as they grow and master before they are four or five months old.
While playing with their siblings or pack members, if a puppy bites another puppy too hard, the other pup yelps loudly in pain and play is stopped immediately. This informs the biting puppy that such force used in the bite is not acceptable and will result in undesirable outcome: and social isolation.
The puppy also gets to know what pain from a bite is like, when he or she gets bitten by the other puppies. This level of training is natural and invaluable, and we humans disrupt it by removing puppies from their litter and bring them into are homes to be raised as pets.
Even puppies that have learned bite inhibition from their siblings have to be reconditioned again when they enter a new home as humans do not have the tough hide that puppies have and their skin is much more easily damaged than dogs, so it’s necessary for us to teach the puppy that a bite with any pressure is not acceptable when dealing with humans and their property.
From this it can be seen how important it is to train a puppy on bite inhibition when it has not had the chance to be trained naturally.
Dog Training Biting, to be effective has to be imparted to the puppies before the close four to five months old.
