# Puppy keeps biting



## Buttercup23 (Feb 18, 2019)

Hi, we picked out cockapoo puppy, Marv, up last weekend. He's now 9 weeks old. The first few days we had him, he was very nibbly which we obvioualy expected but was when he was playing. However, over the past few days he's become very aggressive in his play and has been biting. It doesn't seem like a nibble bite either where he doesn't mean to hurt you but an aggressive bite, he also growls with it. It also seems to come out of nowhere as at other times he's lovely and plays really nicely. Is thisnjist as phase puppies go through? Any advice would be great as we want to knock this out of him as soon as possible as he's going to be around children fairly often too and we don't want them to be scared of him. Thanks xx


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## 2ndhandgal (Aug 29, 2011)

It is a phase all pups go through and you just need to distract them with toys and redirect onto things they can bite and play with. Some pups also growl quite a lot in play too so all sounds very normal. If he does mouth you, just use a toy and redirect onto that - do not tell him off or otherwise react as you can end up becoming a large animated puppy toy otherwise as he mouths and you give a huge reaction to it


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## Dig (Dec 27, 2018)

I can totally understand your concern. My puppy was very similar and it’s taken lots of practice and patience, but things are now much better. He also went through a phase of lunging at the bottom of my jumpers or trousers which wasn’t nice at all, but that has virtually stopped now. On the occasions where redirection to toy wasn’t helping I found stopping play and walking away and ignoring for a minute or two helped him see that biting stops play. In the evenings when he got really excited he had a few minutes in his crate to calm down and that helped too. We have two young boys and we had to make sure they learned how to play in a constructive way to avoid worsening the nipping habit. We found advice elsewhere that suggested saying ouch when the puppy nipped, but I agree that this can just turn it into a game and it didn’t work for us at all. Have fun with your puppy as they grow so quickly


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