There are many queries that come to us daily asking how to educate an aggressive puppy to correct its misbehavior, or even if it is necessary to sacrifice it to prevent the future from being a dangerous dog. We must clarify that there are no dangerous puppies, it may simply be that they have a problem that we do not know how to solve and that is why they show some inappropriate behavior.
Puppies are animals without knowledge that are discovering the world as they grow, it is possible that due to certain problems they can show some hostile behaviors, but nothing that should worry us to the point of being afraid of them. Taking a practical example, a puppy is comparable to a child under one year of age. Do you really think it can be aggressive or dangerous?
Let’s review what are the main reasons why a dog or rather a puppy, may show symptoms of hostility, bites, grunts, etc … And how to fix them to prevent it from becoming a bad habit.
Index of contents
- 1 My puppy bites me and hurts me
- 2 My puppy growls and bites like an aggressive dog
- 3 My puppy is aggressive for no apparent reason
- 4 My puppy is aggressive towards other dogs and people
My puppy bites me and hurts me
You have to start by stating that absolutely all puppies bite, this is due to their own instincts and also to the period in which our puppy begins to grow teeth, which causes a lot of pain in the gums.
Puppies suffer a lot of pain in their mouth when those small, sharp teeth, called baby teeth, begin to emerge. When they are a little more adult they go through the same problem again, exchanging their baby teeth for permanent teeth.
It is completely normal that during this stage they bite everything they catch on their way, since that relieves their gum pain. The problem comes when they do not know how to differentiate between a toy that they can bite and our hand, foot or anything else that should not bite.
To correct this behavior, it will be enough to scold them with a “No!” and applying the bite technique in our puppy very gently, when they bite us or an object that should not bite. Then we will take some of his toys (teethers) and put it in his mouth, making him bite it while we play with it. When he bites the toy we will congratulate him and play with him for a while to try to take the toy away from him.
This is a very simple way to show the puppy that he can bite things, but not all. Only their toys and never our hand, foot, sock or slipper for example…. Remember that it is only a puppy, you must be very patient and practice this exercise several times before you can see positive results.
Puppies can also begin to bite us out of instinct, playing or drawing our attention, so we must apply the same technique to teach them what objects can and cannot bite.
My puppy growls and bites like an aggressive dog
First, we must differentiate if our dog is growling aggressively or if it is simply playing or trying to get our attention. Puppies play by biting and growling, both with other puppies and with adult dogs, it is very normal and healthy for them.
In the same way they try to play with us, growling and biting us, but it is just that, a game. We must teach them to play with their teethers and in a short time they will learn to play with humans.
Although they may appear to be hurting, they play like this, biting, barking and growling. Obviously they do it without hurting other dogs, it is their natural way of relating and playing while they learn. You will see that older dogs sometimes scold them with a bark or growl, it is just a warning to tell them where the limit of their games is.
Sometimes we have received messages indicating that the vet has told them that their two or three month old puppy is going to be very aggressive and that it would be better to put him to sleep…. Honestly, we throw our hands to our heads when we hear arguments of this caliber. No puppy is bad, you just have to detect the reason for their behavior and correct it, no matter their breed or that they bite a lot or a little, there is no aggressive puppy by nature.
If, on the contrary, our puppy growls or bites with the intention of damaging, we must look for the reason why it does it, among the other reasons that we expose in this article.
My puppy is aggressive for no apparent reason
That we have not found the reason for the aggressiveness in our puppy does not mean that there is no such reason. Many times our puppies bite everything or show unusual behaviors due to pain.
Diseases or various internal ailments can cause our dog to have unpleasant and unfriendly behavior. When the pain is strong, they can only express it in their own way, which is defined in puppies with hints of aggressiveness, barking, tantrums, etc …
We can take our puppy to the vet for a complete check-up and rule out possible problems causing pain. In this case we are not referring to the pain of the gums from the exit of the milk or permanent teeth, but rather the pain that a hernia, muscle breakdown or disease can cause.
My puppy is aggressive towards other dogs and people
Fear and anxiety are also important reasons why a dog can display aggressive behavior. Properly socialize our puppy It is a fundamental step in your education and training, since you will learn to live with the environment that surrounds you like other dogs, animals, people, noise …
A fearful puppy can quickly develop aggressive behavior that is not recommended as a defense. We must be very patient as we must socialize it to avoid being afraid and thus eliminate that bad habit.
Putting into practice all the advice we give in the previous link is essential, knowing and playing with other dogs and people is the best way to eliminate your fears and make way for proper socialization.
It is a process that we must carry out with patience but that offers excellent results, although if the situation is beyond us we can always go to a professional trainer to help us with the work.