Training Your Puppy Not To Bite Pants
Create a consistent sequence when your pup is in a pants biting mood. If your puppy bites your pants, give them a warning cue. “Off limits” might work because you’ll remember it!
Your puppy now has two options: Accept a redirect — your desired option — or continue biting pants, which you should follow up with a brief loss of social attention, or a “time out.”
Offer your pup a soft dog toy to bite instead of your pants. If your pup accepts the redirect and bites the toy or leaves your pants alone, great. No further action needed.
If your puppy ignores the toy and, instead of choosing to leave your pants alone, goes to bite them again, give your pup a Time Out cue, then remove yourself from your pup’s reach.
For example, you can say “Sorry! Got to go now!” Then leave your puppy in a safe, gated room, move out of range of the tether, or gently place your pup in their crate.
The sounds or words you use for the warning cue and the time out cue don’t matter so long as they don’t scare your puppy and you use the same word or sound every time — and so does everyone else who handles your pup.
Wait 20 seconds to two minutes for your pup to calm down. Then approach your puppy, and try again. Consistent patterns and cues make learning easy.
You may need to repeat the bite-warn-time-out-repeat process several times before your puppy understands the very predictable pattern — that the way to keep you around is to either not bite your pants or to bite the toy instead of your pants when given the chance.
But, in my experience, if your efforts are consistent and clear, they do catch on eventually!
Teach an alternative behavior. There are lots of options for this, but here is the one that I find works best for most pups—teach them to walk next to you without biting you. Sounds easy right? Well actually it is pretty easy… First, practice this when they are not doing the biting so they can learn it without the distraction. Get a handful of treats (usually something boring like kibble for this one). Put a treat on the ground for your pup to eat, while he is eating walk away, when he races to catch up (because you have a handful of treats), say “yes” as he is approaching and before he bites or grabs your leg, then drop another treat on the ground and repeat. Once your pup is doing well with this, continue with walking away, saying “yes” as he catches up, but then take one or two steps more before dropping the treat. Continue in this way until your pup can walk next to you for ten steps before you drop the treat. Now, at those times when your pup is likely to bite on you, grab a few treats, and do this exercise instead. He will quickly learn to walk with you instead of biting on you.
Now when you stay “stop,” it will mean something to your pup. It will mean stop doing what you are doing and look down.
This is a lot! Do you really have to do all of these things? Maybe, or maybe not. I always start with management because if you can manage it, most pups will outgrow it. But if your pup is super committed to grabbing your legs, you may have to take all of these steps. Don’t worry though, you will only need to do these things for a few weeks until your pup gets the idea and can walk next to you calmly.
Management means prevention. Ask yourself, can I do something to prevent it? For example, does this happen when your pup comes out of the crate and is over excited. Can you hand him a good chew when he comes out—give him something to do with that energy. Does he do it when you take him out to pee? Can you take him out on leash and use the leash to keep him away from your feet? Management may be all you need for some pups. You manage the situation until they outgrow this phase.
Do you have a puppy that bites your feet or ankles when you walk? Does your pup grab your pants leg and start tugging? Are your toes getting bloody from his playful pounces? This is one of those puppy problems that I get asked about so often that I thought it might be helpful to write up my process for figuring out the best solution for dealing with this.
Reasons Why Dogs Like to Nip at Your Ankles and Legs
Why do some dogs appear to enjoy chasing pant legs?
STOP biting legs – Puppy Training
When puppies play with other puppies or explore their environment, they do so with their mouths. It is common for puppies to bite or “mouth” hands and clothes during play or when looking for attention. As annoying and sometimes painful as this behavior may be, it is normal and an important developmental behavior.
When a dog bites another dog or a human, the amount of damage that is inflicted is determined by the amount of pressure the dog exudes with his mouth. As a puppy owner, you want to teach your puppy to inhibit his bite, so when he put his teeth on humans he exudes very soft or no pressure. Most of the work of bite inhibition should have been taught in the litter, however, you may have some training do do as well. The first place to begin is by teaching your puppy how to take treats appropriately.