clem.kizzy

Thank you so much this gives us hope! Thank you too for your descriptive comments it shows how much you care that we succeed and makes it easy to follow your suggestions!! We want her to enjoy the yard but she has a powerful bite, we simply don't want anyone injured in her learning process. Except for this issue she is a very sweet girl, hopefully she'll be able to improve some people view of Rotties, the way our last dog did!!

We have a just turned 6m old Rottie we've had her 3 weeks. We got her from a breeder. We previously had an adult rescue Rottie but have not been through the puppy stage with any dog in a while. The one thing we can't seem to get under control is her playful biting and we know it'll only get worse as she grows. She has punctured our winter boots and broken skin through them once. She bites more when she's excited but this can come on suddenly at any moment (self-exciting). In the house we leave the room don't even look at her and step over a baby gate until she calms down (sits, lays down or plays with a toy). We calmly give her a command like "touch" or "take" before we reenter the room and praise her. This seems to help usually we only have to leave 2,3 times before she stops all together for a while. Needless to say she will do anything bad to get our attention (jump on table, eat chlids rocking chair) while we are out of the room (still in sight). The biggest problem we have is in the yard. We have a fenced in yard but have now been taking her out on the leash in it, to keep her from getting to excited. She will just out of no where jump up and bite our hands, arms, feet, or legs, many times getting our coats and pulling just to get a good grip and bite again. When we are in the yard we use the leash to hold her away from us, we tell her to sit and we keep it that way until she calms down. We would like to be able to play fetch and have her free in the yard, if we do this now she's a like a little attack animal. (Thankfully she is pretty low energy dog!) She's also more likely to bite us if she gets tired, after walks, and after she eats. We do use most of her feedings to do mental exercises, training sessions (gentle, looks at me, touch-target, waiting at doors, basic obedience) to help her be calm. We use 9" braided bully sticks for chews to relax her when we see she's getting tired. (We have to hold these or she finds other things to chew on, like us :-| ). She has been this way from day 1, she learns so easily, we were hoping to have her cured of this by now. Is there something else we can do? I feel I should meantion she was very scared of everything (literally her shadow) when we first brought her home, all things new we have to show her we are not scared and give her treats around it until she's brave enough to inspect it herself. Is there something we are doing wrong or should we simply stick with it?