Building up a Little Dog’s Confidence to Stop His Nipping

Molly a five-year-old Maltipoo who lives in Omaha with Charlie, a three-year-old Morkie. Their guardians set up this dog behavior training session primarily to work with Charlie to get him to stop nipping and biting people in a territorial way.

Charlie was pretty worked up when I stepped inside his home. He nipped me a few times so I adopted slower movements and a body posture to get him to stop nipping.

Shortly after I sat down to start the session, I learned the dogs didn’t know even the most basic of commands like sit or down. Additionally, I found that the dogs didn’t have much structure in their daily life. This can easily give a dog the impression that they have equal status to their humans which makes listening to them optional.

But because the humans petted the dogs, whenever they demanded it, Charlie had gotten the impression that the house and its contents are his property. This is the primary reason why Charlie is displaying this hostile behavior that results in his nipping people.

After suggesting a number of rules and boundaries as well as ways to enforce them, I turned my attention to building up the dog’s confidence by some basic dog training. Because Charlie was so insecure and worked up, I demonstrated these dog training techniques with sweet little Molly. You can find these free dog training tips in the video below.

Training a dog to sit or training a dog to lay down may seem like small things, and they are. These are the simplest of commands and often the first few taught to any dog.

Dogs have self esteem and confidence just like we do. And just as humans, the feel a sense of pride when they master a new skill. Not knowing these most basic commands most certainly resulted in low self esteem in Charlie. This is very much a contributing factor in Charlie’s unwanted dog behavior issues.

Building up the dog’s confidence through these positive dog training techniques while simultaneously incorporating rules, boundaries and limits should diminish Charlie’s perception that he is an authority figure and is doing his duty when he acts territorially or nips guests who visit his home.