HELP! 9 month old still biting and biting HARD!

[AngelaA6]

Gunther is still biting my husbands feet after five months of trying the diversion method with toys, bitter spray, and more recently because his biting has gotten harder, the putting him to the ground method. The last one is not my favorite but nothing has worked so far.

He has always nibbled and bit my husbands feet a little and we have always tried to correct this but it has gotten worse when my husband went from swing to days. Gunther only gets to see my husband for 30 minutes in the morning and 3 hours after my husband gets home.

My husband had been the one that played with him the most and I focused more on the training side of everything but with this new schedule I'm doing both now.

So when we are playing with him, he manages to be playing with his toy and bite my husbands feet. We try to get him to play with us with our hands (like tug of war or fetch) but he opts to wrestle and nip at my husbands feet with the toy in his mouth. His bit has only gotten stronger.

I don't know what to do anymore! Do you guys have any ideas?

[Mary Beth]

It is time to get serious - frankly, I won't play with him where he is encourged to bite something because he is getting so worked up that he is carried away. I would work on obedience, lots of exercise, and I would play with balls - 2 balls - throw one - he brings it - throw the other. If he is interested in tracking - I would do the find it games where I hide something and he has to find it.

[AngelaA6]

I forgot to also post last night that he gets a 1 hour walk and about 2-3 hours of play that turns into training. I clicker train him. I'm saving up (paycuts yay ) for his training so I won't be able to take him to an adult class (because he's older than 6 months ) until april

[TrentL]

My dog does the same with hands and we're slowly working him off it. What we do is a stern "NO" as soon as he goes for the hands. And ALL play stops. His ball is taken away, everything. Everytime he goes for someone's hands thats what we do.

Now if your hands aren't in gloves he doesn't seem to bother.

Though he doesn't bite hard and has a soft mouth, I don't like the behavior, and sometimes if he gets too excited we do the putting him on the ground, Alpha Roll whatever you call it. That has worked more than anything a stern quick correction, then its over and we move on.

[AngelaA6]

If he bites we stop playing and put his toys away and make him go lay down in his spot in the living room. Part of the problem is that he is getting more defiant. He sits 100% percent of the time and only comes when called 85-90% percent. I work with those two a lot and he gets a bigger reward when he does it quickly. I use part of his dinner time kibble to train him during the day. So about 1 cup of kibble that I normally don't use all of because I don't want him getting bored. The problem is with my husbands shift he can't be home when I am training him.

When my husband comes home he really doesn't listen. Like maybe 50% of the time he does.

For example:
I got him to bring the ball back to me when we're playing fetch outside (I tell him, bring it here!) and he does every time, but the moment my husband steps outside he doesn't listen at all.

He's constantly barking at my husband (in a play with me sort of way) but my husband has no energy after a 10-12 hour shift -.-'.

When i'm by myself with the pup (as long as it's not a pet store -.-' my goodness does he pull and whine) he's very obedient but I need him to listen when my husband is home too. Will my husband coming to help train partly resolve this?

[Mary Beth]

Saving up for training, is the way to go and yes your husband should go also.