Hello! My 3 month old Akita loves to get nippy when she’s playing and when she doesn’t want to do something. We have really been working with her on this, especially when she nips in annoyance. She was getting so much better, but took a turn for the worse this last week. She has been biting hands, feet, face, anything she can get. She broke the skin twice on me this week and both times have been out of frustration. This is very disheartening, because she was making great progress. We live in an apartment, but I take her outside at least 4 times a day, two of those times being an hour or longer for a walk and play time. She LOVES to be outside. It’s her favorite. Does anyone have any suggestions on what we can do to help her stop this behavior?
It’s not advisable to get puppies to overtired. Hour walks x Two’ is far too much at that age, puppies, especially large-breeds should not be exercised too much, as over-exercising could cause growing bones and joint problems especially if on hard surfaces, some free running on dirt and grass is ok. A general guide for exercising puppies is to allow them one to two sessions of five minutes walking for each month of age, so for example, a four month old pup could enjoy walks of 20 minutes at a time, once or twice a day. Far better to do short walks, and give mental stimulation, by short training sessions throughout the day and make them fun, teaching tricks ect: Biting As soon as she bites/jumps say a firm no, and walk out the room ignoring her shut the door after a few seconds, go back in, ignore and praise when calm, keep doing it as soon as she starts again. http://www.cockersonline.co.uk/discuss/index.php?topic=64170.0;wap2
Hi Aimee We have a Japenese Akita who is 4 in January Reading your post took me straight back to when we got Yoji. Firstly can I say, I’m not an expert and we learnt along the way, so, forgive me if I sound like a ‘ know it all ‘ I feel you are over tiring her, it seems it’s the best solution....tired pups sleep, sadly that’s not the solution Less is more, give her the toilet visits she need and lots of mind games, stimulation stuff especially whilst she is alone. Puppy biting....oh my...it’s horrible & you never think they are going to change I promise you they do This is how we dealt with Yoji and to this day it still helps, Akitas are know for getting hold of humans to ‘ request thing ‘ For now when she bites try to give her a soft toy into her mouth, but, do not play “ tug of war “ with it...it’s hers. When you give it say “ get a toy, get a toy “ she will learn to get her toy on her own eventually. If you haven’t got any soft toys the thing that worked for us really really well is either a pair of thick socks tied together a couple of times to create knots, inside the knots push a couple of biscuit treats in the knots, the smell will encourage him to take it from you OR an old pillow case OR chop a t-shirt up and tie knots into that. Chewing is very really relaxing for dogs. Please do not punish him for puppy biting as you will end up with other types of problems Trust me from experience when I say “ it’s natural and it will pass “ Yes it hurts and yes it’s annoying, but, these are one of the things we have to endure when we invite a puppy into our home Philippa
