Kuma, who will be 7 months next week, has always been bitey. We chalked it up to being a puppy, but we also tried to get her to stop. She has not stopped, and is destroying our house. She has chewed holes in the walls, down to the drywall. She has chewed up the linoleum on our floor in strips. She is chewing the corners of our baseboard. She chewed the knob on our water heater while we were gone and in the process turned it on and nearly flooded our mudroom.
Obviously she's back in her crate while we're gone for the time being-- but WHAT can we do? She doesn't mind bitter apple. Vinegar solution grosses her out, but only temporarily. We have cayenne sprinkled around the water heater, which helps. She's also a digger. She doesn't seem hungry. She has zillions of toys. We have another dog who apparently doesn't mind that she bites him during play. She bites my hands all the time, but not my husband's.
I feel like we've tried everything short of increasing her exercise time, which I know will help some. But even on weekends when we get lots of time in she can get destructive and mouthy. We are so frustrated with her, we need some more ideas, please! Anyone know if her spay will calm this down at all?
Don't let her be out and about if you can't supervise. And when you are home, make sure you stay on top of her chewing. Don't yell or get angry, but gently redirect her chewing onto something she likes. If there is a chew that she absolutely loves, when you catch her messing up the house, say "No" or whatever you non-mark word is and give her the chew. That's how I got Conker to quit chewing on our stuff. If I couldn't watch him he was crated with a toy or chew. When he was out, he was always in sight. If I caught him chewing on something he was told "No, not that. Chew on this." and I'd give him his toy, or bully stick/bone/whatever. Sometimes it took several repetitions and he'd keep going back to the hat, power cord, remote, etc. but he eventually got it. Also, pick up everything and put it all out of reach even if she hasn't chewed on it before. Conker would also dig in his water dish (when it was empty) then go for the floor once the bowl flipped over. He was told, just like chewing, not to do that and I'd give him something else to do.
Chewing on your hands... When she does that, get up and leave. Ignore her. If that doesn't work, put her in "time-out" for a short while. Only a minute or so. Every time she bites, tell her "No biting" or whatever you want to use for that, and get up and walk away/ignore her. She keeps trying, "Time out!" and she goes to her time-out spot. Crate, other room, whatever. When she bites, she doesn't get your attention.
Whatever you do, don't get angry and yell. It's incredibly hard not to, but that will only make it worse. Conker is trained so that he understands what "No" or "Ack!" means, but that doesn't mean he won't chew on the pencil, or get on the table. I always have to catch him in the act or telling him not to do it won't work. For example, if I tell him "No!" when he's getting off the table, he doesn't think that being on the table is the bad thing. Getting off is. So I have to be quick enough to tell him not to even get up there in the first place. Or, if Mom comes into my room and alerts me to the presence of "meat and bone crap" outside of her room (that happens to be a banana peel...) I can't go find Conker, drag him to the mess and tell him no. He'll think the mess is bad, not the act of ripping up the banana peel. That won't do any good really, so he gets off the hook unless I catch him taking the peel from the trash or ripping it up.
Never punish the mess, punish the act. If you can't catch her chewing on something, you have to pay more attention to where she is and what she is doing. I have no idea if a spay will help. There are other threads about this sort of stuff. Use the Advanced Search feature up top to look for them.
thanks for your feedback. i have searched before and tried several things i've found here, and it hasn't really helped so i thought i'd try to post and clarify that it feels like we've tried almost everything. i think supervision is key-- and finding a discipline system that she actually cares about will help, too. she's at a very frustrating age, i guess. looking forward to her adulthood!
Yeah, Conker drove me NUTS with his biting. I basically had to ride it out. He's still a very mouthy dog but understands when I've had enough. Teaching him bite inhibition was harder than getting the biting to stop, but constant training is what made it possible. Just because he got "better" didn't mean I could slack off, and even to this day I still have to remind him not to bite so hard when he greets me or when he wants attention.
I got Scout when she was 10 weeks old, and was totally amazed at how much she chewed and how destructive she was. Losech has some good ideas above. I'll add that ice cubes helped as Scout loved chewing on them, and at about one year of age she began to calm down a bit, at 18 months her nipping and chewing had greatly reduced, and now at age 3 she is downright mellow. (Most of the time) Just so you know it does not go on forever.
Yep, that's what I thought, bobc33....it doesn't continue forever. In the meantime, crate, crate, crate, and Losech had some great suggestions too. Hang in there!
BTW, one of my Shibas seemed to LIKE Bitter Apple! She'd lick it right off stuff! I ended up using tabasco sauce on stuff I didn't want her to lick, and I put cayenne pepper where they dig outside. It helps as long as it is on there. I also ended up having to put up fences around all my garden areas, because of course, it is much more fun to dig where I have been digging....
And I hear you about the biting and how bad it can be. Toby used to have a particularly bad habit of biting at the back of my legs (around the knees) and grabbing onto my pants and hanging from them! Except that, if I had shorts on he'd try to do the same thing! My god it was awful! It was really hard to try to calmly distract him to something else when you have a dog hanging from your body....Or my hair--he'd grab my hair too, if I bent over, and hang from it. I have to admit that I DID end up using a squirt bottle to discourage some of his biting. I'd prefer not to use those kind of aversives, but there were times when I was so frustrated (and sometimes in pain) that it seemed like that might be less aversive than losing my temper and yelling at him. I don't recommend it, particularly, but since he hates water, it did stop some of his crazed biting, though of course his favorite trick (the back of the knees thing) was a sneak attack anyway....
(When I read your thread title, btw, I thought, hmmm...typical Shiba puppy! *lol*)
Oh my goodness, Toby sounds just like Kuma. Except Kuma loves the spray bottle. Go figure...
I was worried that 7 months was a bit old for her to be biting so much still, but it sounds like it's not that unusual for shibas. Thanks for your help and encouragement!
Kishi is a year and a half and is still quite bitey when she gets excited. (Nothing like when she was a puppy!) She was a huge chewer when she was young. It tapered off at about a year but unless we are keeping an eye on her she still goes back in her crate. We tried the freadom thing at a year and that ended in a huge hole in our carpet, my whicker bar stool being chewed to peices and the leather couch being nibbled.
