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Thank you so much for your reply and all of your advice so far. Teddy is a toy poodle. My mother isn’t that mobile so about five days a week, he will spend the whole day with her, except when I take him outside for a couple of hours. He even sleeps with her. A couple of days a week, she will be gone for two or three hours at a time. We don’t leave him completely alone due to his separation anxiety. I train him on a daily basis for various and assorted things so I am trying to keep him mentally stimulated. My mom doesn’t train him at all, but does play with him and they have their cuddle time together. I think I have identified three causes for his biting, but it doesn’t explain everything. I still don’t know what triggers some instances. In one case, she will go to stand up from her chair. She isn’t fast about standing up. If he is on the ottoman in front of her chair, he will nose boop her once to tell her to sit down (I presume) and if she continues to try to stand he will grab her arm with his mouth. In another instance, she will be looking at her tablet and he will jump in her lap and grab the same arm in his mouth. I assume it is his way of asking for her to put down her tablet, but sometimes, even when she does put it down, he will occasionally, continue to grab at her arm. In the third instance, she will be eating soft ice and he will pat on her arm with his paw once while looking at the ice and if she doesn’t give it to him, he grabs her arm with his mouth. Going back to the pillow incident mentioned in my original post, he likes trying to bite some of the fabric on that pillow. I have been trying to work with him on leaving it alone, but it is slow going.. My mother was relocating it so he could not get to it, which is what triggered him grabbing her arm. I think it might have been a case of resource guarding.

Hello. I hope everyone is well. Almost six months ago, we adopted a four month old poodle puppy from a group that rescued his mother from a hoarding situation. We think he spent the first four months of his life in a basement with about 15 other dogs. When we first brought him home, he was afraid of everything. It took a good while to get him to go outside and every noise he heard sent him running. He has made great progress over the last few months. Sounds don’t scare him like they once did and he will go on short walks now. There are three main things that we are struggling to resolve and any help that can be provided would be amazing. He loses his little mind when I take out the trash. The moment he hears the bag rustle, he starts barking and growling. I usually keep him behind a gate when I am getting the trash ready so he stands up on two legs barking his head off. When I walk past him with the trash, he tries to bite the bag and sometimes, my clothes. I tried letting him sniff empty trash bags and reward him for being calm, but that hasn’t helped. At one time, I thought it was because the noise reminds him of some of his toys, but his barking seems more angry than playful. He doesn’t react like this when I do anything with a trash bag outside, just inside. His barking is getting worse. I think he barks for two main reasons. In one instance, I think it is because we are not doing what he wants. I considered that it was because he wanted our attention, but we give him a ton of attention. We tried turning our back or leaving the room when he barks, but that just seems to make him angrier. It turns the dial from a 5 to a 10. In the second instance, I think it is because he hears something outside at night. The only truly quiet part of the house is the bathroom and we can’t put him in there. We try to turn up the TV to drown out the noise, but that doesn’t work. We try to distract him with play, but the moment we stop, he is back at it. There are cats that roam the neighborhood freely so we think it could be them and there is not much we can do about them. He has started biting my mother. Most of the time, it isn’t hard, but he did break skin recently when she was picking up a pillow. I thought we had gotten him past the puppy biting, but it seems like he has regressed with her. He still doesn’t bite me. He spends a lot of time with her during the day and she does seem to be his favorite. He has separation anxiety and it is worse when she is gone than when I leave. She doesn’t do much training with him due to mobility issues. He seems to do it out of frustration because he wants something from her, but we don’t know what. Thank you for any advice you can give.