Tips to Stop a Dog From Nipping and Biting His Family Member’s Clothes

By: David Codr

Published Date: June 30, 2020

Jonesy scaled - Tips to Stop a Dog From Nipping and Biting His Family Member's Clothes

For this Playa Vista dog training session, we worked with Jonesy, a 11 month-old Terrier Griffon mix, training him to stop jumping up and grabbing his human’s clothes when he wants things or isn’t getting attention.

In the middle of asking Jonesy’s guardians what the dog could do to make them happy, Jonesy grabbed the sleeve of her shirt ands started tugging. They discouraged the dog verbally and pulled the sleeve out of its mouth. While this stopped the encounter, it did not stop the clothes biting behavior. When Jonesy decided to grab ahold of clothes to demand attention from his guardian the next time, I pulled out my camera to go over one of the easiest ways to stop a dog from biting or grabbing clothing to get attention.

Although a dog biting at human’s clothes to ask for attention is nto a desired behavior, I was glad this created the opportuity for me to do a free positive dog training video on how to stop a dog from pulling on clothes to ask for attention. This is probably the most effective way of stopping a dog from biting clothes for attention.

Using a Negative Punishment like this is an extrememly effective way to stop unwanted dog behaviors as it teaches the dog that the behavior results in the exact opposite of what they are trying to accomplish. While its not always convenient to do so, if the guardians get into the habit of immediately leaving any time Jonesy jumps up or pulls on their clothes, the dog will quickly adopt a new behavior.

If the guardians also practice petting with a purpose and passive training consistently, they should be able to teach the dog to stop biting clothes to ask for attention.

To help the guardians remember all the other dog training tips we covered in this in home Playa Vista dog training session, we filmed a roadmap to success video that you can watch below.

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This post was written by: David Codr