DOG BEHAVIOUR PROBLEMS
Mouthing And Biting
Dogs use their mouths to explore the world, but it’s never a good thing if they are mouthing, biting or nipping. We need to teach them what is and isn’t acceptable.
Nipping to encourage play.
Very often a characteristic of younger dogs, dogs might nip to initiate a game. This might be quite light-hearted, but most people will want to be able to turn this behaviour off.
Mouthing.
Mouthing is where a dog is using its mouth gently – biting without using any force. It could be doing this for a number of reasons. Although no harm is meant and no damage is caused, I would always discourage a dog from closing its mouth on a person.
Biting - never a good thing.
The important thing with biting is to work out why the dog feels it needs to bite or why it’s acceptable, and we can then deal with the root of the problem.
With a small dog or a young dog, it might be tempting not to worry about biting and mouthing; if it doesn’t hurt then it’s easy to pass over it. There are plenty of reasons why we should take it seriously, not least of which is that if a dog gets comfortable closing its mouth on a human it is a very, very dangerous precedent to set. My recommendation is to always take mouthing and biting seriously and always to discourage the dog from doing it.