Great Training Tips to Stop a Shepherd from Mouthing

In this Omaha dog training session we worked with Dakota a two-year-old German Shepherd who needed help to stop nipping and stop mouthing when people petted her.

Dakota was starting to mouth or nip at kids when they were trying to pet her on the head. Often times this type of nipping is just playfulness from the dog, however there are ways to stop this kind of play. I introduced the Conditional Emotional Response or CER method to reteach Dakota that when a hand is approahching her she should calmly sit and wait to be petted, which you can see in the video below.

I want to remind the guardians that when they are working on this there will be times when Dakota still moves her nose upwards to try to nip at their hand. If this happens scale the exercise backwards, or in other words just put your hand above her head and then bring your hand back and then give her the treat. Just keep the exercise easy for her so she can be successful. Remember that dogs have good and bad days too and sometimes she will have more patience than on other days. Over time though she will learn how to sit and wait to be petted patiently.

By the end of the session Dakota was learning how to relax and look to her guardians for leadership and direction. To keep up with this good behavior the guardians will want to use our Petting wit a Purpose method to reward her for good behavior and our Escalating Consequences to disagree with her. We wrapped up this dog behavior session with Dakota’s Roadmap to Success video, which you can watch below.