Tips to Stop a Dog From Biting Shy Dogs

For this Santa Monica dog training session, we worked with one and a half year-old Boston Terrier Bebe, sharing tips to stop a dog from biting shy dogs.

We started the session off by going over a number of fundamentals. Being a Covid-era dog, Bebe did not get as much socialization as her guardians would have liked. We went over how to read body language, dog consent, introduced a marker word, stressed the importance of celebrating voluntary behaviors and went over some creative exercise tips.

After discussing Bebe’s dog biting behavior, I learned that it started after being boarded for almost 2 weeks when she was just about a year old. While daycare can be a wonderful way for many dogs to drain energy, that’s a long time for a novice dog to be boarded. Dogs often play for hours on end without breaks or naptime (a breed like Bebe needs a good 12-15 hours of sleep a day and at night, many dogs who arent kennel trained bark for their guardians all night long. That can be a lot for some dogs and just like us, being overly tired can result in making mistakes or not operating at our best.

Since Bebe’s dog biting behavior started after this boarding experience, it’s quite possible that that experience contributed to or caused Bebe to start biting submissive dogs at the dog park.

How to stop a dog from biting shy dogs

Stopping dog bites can be a complicated process. You first need to identify what the trigger (or triggers) is. It’s important to remember that all behavior is trying to achieve something. What I do as a LA dog behavior expert is try to determine why a dog is trying to do something, then figure out a way for s/he to accomplish it without offering the unwanted behavior.

But in Bebe’s case, she was only aggressive towards shy or submissive dogs. She is able to run and play with dogs that she knows that are confident with no problem. This makes treating the dog biting behavior more difficult.

Instead of having an actual exercise to stop dog biting, I wanted to offer a number of guidelines and tips to stop a dog from biting other dogs. I handed on my camera to the guardian so that I could share a number of tips to stop a dog from biting other dogs at the dog park.

If you have a dog that bites shy or submissive dogs, you should definitely check out the free positive dog behavior video below.

By trying to walk Bebe with these shy dogs and follow these tips, I’m hopeful that she can learn to have positive associations, and play with shy or insecure dogs. But because this behavior is so specific, the Guardian may manage the situation, by simply avoiding situations where BB meets dogs, who are shy, insecure, or submissive.

I asked the guardians to follow up with me over the next week or two as they are practicing going to the dog park after setting BB up for success. My hope is that more structure and strategic set ups can help put her in a position to succeed.

We cover the number of other dog behavior tips in this in-home Santa Monica dog training session. To help the guardians remember them all we recorded a roadmap to success summary video that you can check out below.