Hi guys,

We have a question relating to 10.5 week old puppy aggression for you. Most of the time, our puppy Raley is a sweet little thing, but sometimes he gets aggressive and wants to bite and growl. For regular chewing and minor biting, we typically try to mimic another puppy with a high pitched "yelp" or "ouch". We also try to get him to stop chewing things he shouldn't by giving him a command and offering him a chew toy. I would classify these scenarios as non-aggressive biting and chewing. It is the occasional time that he aggressively bites and growls that we would like to stop. We were trying to think if there is any trend to the times he gets like this, but it seems like it is pretty random. One time he did it when we were looking at his mouth gently, but he now lets us inspect his mouth without any fuss. Another time he has done it when we try to take a toy from him. It is common for him to do it when we put his harness over his head. (For the harness case, we now try to associate putting on and taking off his harness by associating it with something good by giving him a treat.)

We asked our breeder (who has 30 years of experience breeding Westies) how to combat this, and she gave us the following recommendations. She said that when he growls, pick him up by the scruff of his neck and hold him there until he stops. For biting, she said to grab his nose and say "No!" My mom also gave us a similar recommendation that she got from her golden retriever breeder after she got her puppy.

The thing that we are worried about is that we don't want to negatively affect our relationship with our puppy. We want our relationship to be based on love, trust, and respect, and it seems that these methods, which may work, could negatively affect our relationship.

We really value your advice, so we'd appreciate your opinion.

Another question related to this is if it is ok for our puppy to growl when playing with other dogs? He was playing with another dog about 4 times his size today, and he would start growling aggressively when the other dog got a little too rambunctious.

Thanks!

Brian

We are having similar problems with our two golden retriever puppies. They are 9.5 weeks old and brothers. One tends to be aggressive with my wife and sometimes very aggressive with each other. Would love advice with this.

Thanks and we love your podcasts and online training!

Travis

Please consider this an answer to both of your questions.

First, let me address the advice given by the breeder to scruff the puppy and/or grab his muzzle. The theory behind scuffing a puppy is that mother dogs correct their pups by scuffing. I have not seen a mother dog scruff her pup. Shaking by the neck is associated with killing, not correcting. Scuffing a puppy may cause panic, a defensive reaction or both. Please do not scruff your puppy!

Holding a dogs muzzle in a quiet moment as you gaze in to his eyes is communicating trust and asking him to accept your leadership. Holding a pup’s muzzle that is agitated can result in an escalation of his agitation. You may win the confrontation due to your size, but what did you win? Correcting a puppy by ‘going at him’ causes him to withdraw from you or fight back. Neither of these brings the love, trust, and respect that you are seeking. Please listen to our podcast on effective discipline.

Raising two puppies at the same time is certainly challenging. Listen to our podcast on living with multiple dogs. It is very important that your puppies are as comfortable being alone as they are with each other.

As puppies play together monitor the level of their rough play. Restrain the pup you think is being the bully and notice what the other puppy does. If the puppy runs away then you were correct to intervene. However if the other pup backs up then comes for more play then, to the pups there was not an issue. Try your best not to separate the pups for arguing at 9 weeks old. The chance is slim that they will actually injure each other because of jaw strength and tooth size. Holding your breath for 10 seconds will often be long enough for the pups to ‘work it out’. Please do not do this with puppies that have lost their puppy teeth.

Avoid ‘taking sides’. Dog life is not fair. Taking the stolen toy back and giving it to the loser is counterproductive to pack law. Determine which puppy is your dominant one and treat him like the top dog. Feed him first, walk him first, and pet him first. Mother Nature is difficult to fight. Cooperate with the natural pecking order keeping in mind that you are the top dog.

Please give me more information about the puppy’s aggression towards your wife.

I hope this has been helpful Please keep us posted with your progress. Thank you, Margaret Davis