Play mouthing

[MrsBoats]

Hi Everyone,

I have a quick question for you. Sam is about a year and 9 months and he's been perfectly great since we rescued him in April. The only thing he does is he gets really rambuncious sometimes and he wants to play badly when he meets people. He doesn't get mouthy with us....we laid down that law down early. But recently, when he gets playful with people I've seen him gently grab a sleeve on a jacket. Tonight he placed his mouth while "play growling" around my friend's knee. She said he didn't bite down at all and if she hadn't looked down, she wouldn't have even known that he did it.

I just know that behavior isn't good. I'm not sure if this sort of stuff could lead to worse stuff down the road. It's mostly happens when lots of people are petting him if we walk on a crowded street. Sometimes I see people pet him really vigorously and roughly and that leads to the mouthiness. I know it's play but to someone else, they may interpret it totally the opposite.

Any suggestions on how to get this behavior to stop?

Thanks in advance!

[This message has been edited by MrsBoats (edited September 26, 2000).]

[WorkinDogz]

Sounds like he goes into "overload" in situations where there is a lot of activity.

People really don't know "how to pet/play" with dogs very often. They think it's really neat to "rough them up" (especially large breed dogs).

You have control over that however. It's really easy to say "We don't play/pet with him like that..please do this instead and he enjoys it sooooo much."

The mouthing thing should not be tolerated in play or not. He needs to understand that his mouth around any part of anyone's body is unacceptable and a correction is warranted; play or not.

I would intoduce distraction to him slowly and keep him out of hectic situations where he might become overwhelmed.

Training should be a daily thing for him too

Good luck and rememeber; he's your dog! You don't have to "accept" incorrect play/petting any more than you would accept someone trying to hurt him.

[ryand]

I agree with WorkinDogz... your dog is your responsibility and you decide who plays with him and how... you can work through this by slowly acclimating your dog to the play and avoid any overload...

[RottiDAD]

I had the mouthing problem with my male, Zeus. My female has never being a "mouthy" type but Zeus is a different story. He is the type that when you come home the first thing he does is look for something to put in his mouth and start whining. This slowly turned into mouthing my arm when he was licking me. I broke him from this habit by removing my arm(hand..etc,) from his mouth, closing his mouth and correcting with a firm OFF.

Hope this is some help...It worked for me

[MrsBoats]

Thanks everyone for your help. I'm going to try some of the tips you've all given me.

Overload is a good description of what happens with Sam when he's confronted by too many friendly people.

Thanks again for all of your help!