pitsnok wrote:Sorry to DP but I felt like I should say that although it seemed play-ish, it wasn't just mouthing. It was like, my arm in his mouth, but there was no vocalizing or anything, and it was brief. When Ollie, and all our others, have been mouthy they have shown signs of realizing they did something wrong when they have been corrected...not boss. It almost seems like he is "standing up" to me...or something? (Does that even make sense?)
amalie79 wrote:Robin, as I said, is very mouthy. She plays hard and plays with her mouth. And while I'd say she has pretty good bite inhibition in terms of force (she's not broken the skin on any of us here), she does "bite" hard.
M. Shirley Chong has a wonderful article on the Keeper Page at on teaching bite inhibition.
http://www.shirleychong.com/keepers/archives/bite.txt
She has two basic assumptions:
1) Any dog, no matter how stable and well socialized, could be pushed far enough to bite. I don't think there's a dog alive that wouldn't bite if it thought it was defending it's own life.
2) Although I try my best to protect my dog from situations where they could be defensive, life happens and I may not always succeed.
If the worst happened and my dog were pushed to the point of biting, I'd rather have a dog that knew how much pressure is enough to make their point rather than a dog that rips someone's face off due to a lack of experience in biting.
A dog that causes a bruise or superficial scratch is much less likely to be condemned to death by the local authorities than one that leaves deep punctures and/or rips.
Ian Dunbar studied over 130 cases of serious dog bites. In every single one of those cases, the dogs had been brought up with bite prohibition (love that word for the distinction, Helix!) rather bite inhibition.
Yes, it's true that dogs raised with bite inhibition do bite more. But I believe that they cause fewer injuries and less severe injuries.
And playing bitey-bitey games with dogs is lots of fun.
I want my dogs to be experts in just how to bite humans just as I want them to be experts at dog aggression. My intention in both cases is to have a safer dog.
M. Shirley Chong
pitsnok wrote:Also, All I said was a firm, "No!" when correcting him. Nothing angry or out of control. And I picked up the ball and we were done playing.
pitsnok wrote:I feel like he was just playing. Although it did break the skin this time. Earlier in the evening he had jumped up on boyfriend and bit a hole in his hoodie... I think he just had energy to burn and got a little wild. Hence why we went to play with the jolly ball.
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