Teaching a Gentle Mouth (Patreon)

I teach all dogs to have a gentle mouth to avoid having an overly nippy puppy. A myth with positive reinforcement training is that using these methods teaches the dog that they can do whatever they want to do. I am big on setting boundaries and teaching dogs exactly what those boundaries are. One of my big boundaries is that I don’t want my dogs to put their mouth on humans in any way. (At least not until they are older and have learned the skill of an extremely gentle mouth, even in high arousal.) While teaching this involves multiple games that take place over time, I always start with tug, beginning with my rules for playing tug.

• No mouthing the human hands. Often dogs will try to move their mouth up the tug toy, slowly getting closer and closer to the human. That’s OK, but the moment they make contact with my hands, I drop the toy and play stops. Depending on the arousal level, the play may stop for only a few seconds or it may stop for the day. It doesn’t take long for the dogs to learn to stop moving up the rope before they reach the human hands.

• Keep 4 feet on the floor, unless being asked to do something else with your feet. I like this rule because it prevents the dog from developing the habit of pawing at the human’s hand during play. I don’t often set out to teach the dog this rule as much as I do the “No Mouths” rule, but I treat it very much the same way.  If the dog jumps on me or paws at me, play stops temporarily. Keeping the toy low to the ground helps the dog keep all four paws on the floor much easier. 

I also teach my dogs to do nose targets on my flat hand. This is done when the dog is calm, at a lower arousal level then what happens with tug. But it’s a very important part in teaching the dog to have a gentle mouth.  I also use retrieve to help teach the skill of a very soft, gentle mouth once the dog is a bit older and has learned some self control. Quite often I mix the game of tug with the game of retrieve to help the dog grasp this concept really quickly.