How To Stop a Little Rescue Dog from Nipping At Feet

In this Omaha dog training session we worked with Riley, a four-year-old rescue Shih Tzu who needed help calm down and to stop nipping, stop chasing feet and stop jumping up on his guardians when they got home.

After I arrived I sat down to chat with Riley’s guardian about her main dog behavior concerns. I learned that Riley is a recent rescue dog who is fearful of people but gets over excited when they come home and chases their feet while walking through the house. My guess is that his over excitement comes from being anxious and wanting to control or correct his guardians. To help Riley overcome his anxiety I had them practice slowing things down when they walked through the door as you can see in the video below:

As you can see in the video I had the guardians stop whenever Riley would start to nip at their feet. This essentially teaches Riley that nipping or jumping at his guardians results in no attention and he doesn’t get to play games by chasing their feet. Over time if they practice stopping like this Riley will learn to be calm and stop nipping at their feet.

By the end of the session Riley was learning how to relax when his guardians were walking around the home. I want to remind them to continue to use the rules and structure that we put in place to keep up with this good behavior. We wrapped up this dog behavior session with Riley’s Roadmap to Success video, which you can watch below.