Biting and Time-Out

[GeorgiesDad]

Dear all,
There's lots on here about biting and I hope much of it will be useful.

We have a 13 wk old puppy called Georgia, or Georgie. She has in the last couple of weeks decided to bite more aggressively than a playful nip and we're getting frustrated trying to figure out what to do. She's not really responding to the "OW" and ignore thing (she just bites you some more so that, unless you're masochistic, or zen passive, it's very hard not to respond).

So I'm interested in the idea which has been aired here fairly often about closing the door on her for a few minutes so she can calm down. My question is this: do people have a time out room? My worry is that if I shut the door on her in most of our rooms she'll just happily occupy herself with whatever she can chew in there .... or is that the idea? And presumably if she whines and tries to break the door down, you ignore her.

All best wishes,
Gavin

 

[trudy]

Okay i don't know if this is P.C. or not, Georgie is a little younger than Trudy but we've just started using the time out method, however we couldn't put her in a room or put ourselves in another room as she would simply furiously scratch at the door, I really wasn't into ruining all my doors so what I do is a have her leash secured to the bottom of my radiator.....when she has to have a timeout I leash her there, and then I don't pay any attention to her.....

Once she does her big boxer sigh and settles down I take her out of timeout...

I'm just letting you know what I do, hopefully this will not be misconstrued and I'll have everybody yelling at me how cruel I am to chain my dog to the radiator....it's the only thing that works...

Maybe you can think of a creative way to isolate and still have a bit of control of Georgie, she is very small and you wouldn't want her to associate negative things with her leash...maybe you could baby gate her in a puppy proof kitchen for 1 minute or something along those lines....

 

[munchichi2550987]

Hi Gavin

I'm sure you will get a lot of advice on this, but I just wanted to mention that I also just started time out. I put her in the bathroom, shut the door and wait outside the door. For some reason, she does not scratch or cry. Very odd. I only leave her in there for a minute. 2 minutes was the most. She doesn't make a sound and just waits. Then I don't pay attention to her after I let her out for another minute. This seems to be working so far. If she did scratch the door I would put her in her crate. I would not say anything . I would just put her in there with her toys and give her treats so she wouldn't think she was being punished. It would just be what it is . a time out to cool off. Like I said, I know that many people have different ways of doing time outs so it's whatever you feel works best for you!! Good luck:D

 

[GeorgiesDad]

Update

Thanks for your input!
After your replies my wife and I started using the time-out -- usually the biting happened in our back yard during play so we would say TIME OUT and then come into the back porch and ignore her for a couple of minutes.

This seemed to work.

Yesterday Georgie went to the vet for her rabies shot and general check-up. Thought I'd share the vet's insight on the biting/time-out issue.

1. she agreed that time-out can be very effective -- although she recommended the crate as a good place. NOT as a place for punishment, but as a place for cooling off -- put the toys in there etc. We haven't tried this yet, because another technique of hers seems effective --

2. Picking her up and holding her in your arms on her back (like cradling)-- ie she's in a very submissive position. It's not an "alpha roll" pin down on the floor, but it does seem to encourage (in a nicer way) submissive, calmer behaviour.
Obviously our doggie is still small enough that we can do this, but of course she won't be in a few months!

#2 is now our first course of action -- and if we have to do it more than 2-3 times, it's cool off time in the crate.

Things DO seem better, though -- for which much thanks to you all -- and I suppose I am becoming convinced that the worst punishment of all for our boxer is to be ignored by us. Instead of biting my shorts now, she sort of thinks about it, and then decides against it.

Best wishes,
Gavin

 

[JulieM]

A problem to watch out with on the second technique - if she begins to find the "cradling" pleasant, it could end up reinforcing the biting behavior. Remember, negative attention is still attention, so quite often becomes, to the dog, a reinforcer instead of a punisher. ("Punisher" in OC terms means something that decreases the likelihood of a behavior recurring.)