Free Training Tips to Stop Puppy Nipping and Mouthing

For this Omaha puppy training session we helped Becca, a three-month-old Border Collie pup. Her guardians set up a training session with us to get her to stop puppy nipping and biting. They also wanted to prevent other common puppy problems.

Becca showed a good confidence and curiosity for her age. She was on the mellow side when I first arrived but certainly revved up her energy level once she fully woke up.

How to Stop Puppy Nipping and Mouthing

It didn’t take long for her to start nipping at me. So, I went over some puppy training tips to stop this behavior.

You can get some free positive puppy training tips to stop a puppy’s nipping by watching the video below.

Since puppies sample things with their mouth, some mouthing and nipping is to be expected. It’s important to remember that when a puppy nips, we can work on their bite control. This is one of the most important things you can teach a puppy.

Sound crazy? I have seen many dogs that were not well trained or socialized. However, their guardians helped them learn strong bite inhibition. When these dogs were startled or in a situation where they might bite, the bite was minor and did not break the skin.

Stopping immediately and yelping if a dog or puppy bites too hard is how dogs teach each other how to have a soft bite. Repeated yelps and pauses by humans are required to initially slow down then stop puppy nipping.

Using Bite Inhibition to Stop a Puppy’s Nipping

Bite inhibition is one of the more underdeveloped skills for many dog guardians. There are a number of ways to help your puppy develop a strong bite inhibition.

Playing tug of war with a rope can be fun. You should stop or pause when the dog gets too excited. This helps the dog learn self-control. It also teaches the dog to settle down quickly.

A great place to help a puppy develop bite inhibition is in puppy socialization classes. It feels good to a puppy to bite and nip.

But just like us, it can be a little painful to be on the receiving end. This will happen in any good puppy school during socialization. It was a smart choice for her guardians to sign her up for Omaha’s best puppy classes.

Tips for Training Border Collie Puppies

When we were discussing toys and items for Becca to chew on, the subject turned towards puppy eating, food and treats. Many people are unaware that you can reduce the amount of poop that comes out of their puppy by selecting the right food. There are also a number of popular chew or ingestible items that can be harmful to your puppy.

I spent a few minutes going over some feeding tips and the best food, treats and chew toys to give a puppy. You can get these free puppy training food tips in the video below.

No puppy training session would be complete without teaching some basic commands so I showed the guardians how to train a puppy to sit.

Becca understood the situation in a few minutes. We then trained her to lay down, sit up, and come to whoever called her. This is one sharp pup, but it’s not surprising. One of the smartest dogs on the planet is the Border Collie.

It is important for the guardians to practice the sit, down (crash), up, and come commands. They should do this a few times a day. Aim for 10-20 repetitions each time for the next week. This will help her get really good at these commands.

Once that is the case, I strongly recommend practicing each command separately and in a different order. If you train a dog to do the same series of commands in a row over and over, they will start to associate them. You ask the puppy to sit, they do, then immediately move into a down position, then sit up, etc.

Once the puppy has learned all the commands, practice them separately. This will help her respond to each command on its own. She won’t confuse one command with another. Since Becca is such a smart puppy, this shouldn’t be too challenging for her guardians.

By the time we were ready to wrap up the session, little Becca was wiped out. This was quite a lot for the little puppy to absorb in only a few hours. That said, we were successful in getting her to stop puppy nipping and stop puppy mouthing right away with a yelp. The puppy class will help reduce her nipping even more as well as help her develop better bite inhibition.

I also suggested that her guardians visit the Quest Ed section of our website. It has many free videos on puppy training and behavior. I filmed these videos while training my service dog, Quest.

We wrapped up the session by filming a roadmap to success video. You can watch it for yourself and get a ton of puppy training tips by watching the video below.