My tried and tested method for helping a dog cope with being separated from me is to have several periods of say, half an hour, where they get 100% undivided attention, playing, training, grooming followed by a period of no attention at all even though I am still present.

So I might decide that at 10am I am going to put on the answer machine and play with my dog. At 10.30 I will give a very clear "That's it" accompanied by a pat or a stroke (mine is usually a kiss but not everbodys cup of tea) and get up and go and do the washing up and make the bed or sit and read the paper and pretend that the dog is invisible. Nothing that she does for the next half hour will get my attention, short of setting fire to the house.   Then at 11 I'll acknowledge her again and carry on as normal.

She needs to learn to cope without your attention on demand and I find that eventually following the "That's it" signal the dog will take herself off and settle down knowing that I am busy and not available to her.  Eventually I should be able to leave the room when I know she is settled and she won't worry.

If you are going to leave her don't go straight away after lots of attention, give her time to settle by doing some chores or reading the paper first for a while.


Firstly, don't use her crate to put her in when you are cross with her or when she is having a mad moment.  The crate is perfect for sleeping and resting in and for somewhere to go with a chew toy when you are busy and cannot be watching her.

Puppies mouth and bite in play. It is how they play with each other. You now have to teach her how to play with you. I recommend teaching her to play with toys and keeping the toys valuable by only ever letting her play with them with you. Let her have something suitable to chew whenever she wants it such as a nylabone or a little kong but keep all of her other toys just for interactive games with you. At every opportunity, take a toy from your pocket and encourage her to play with the toy. She may miss the toy occasionally and get you but it will be a genuine mistake.   Human hands with toys in are exciting. Human hands without toys must be boring.

When she is quiet and restful and you can have her on your lap, allow her to mouth you gently as you stroke her so that she can learn to inhibit her bite. If she bites hard, look hurt and say "ouch" If that doesn't work take her off your lap and get up and walk away.

Don't get cross when she bites or she will follow your example and get cross back.

If she has her mad manic biting moments an hour or two after eating then it would be worth looking into her diet. Lots of manufactured dog foods are high in additives and e numbers.

I feed and recommend Burns and Naturediet.  This link explains about how important diet is with regard to health and behaviour in young dogs.

Hiya

thanks for the advice!  The problem is that if she bites us say on the trousers, and movement from the leg or anything else seems to set her off - eg the other day she bit me on the stomach (I was on the floor) and then jumped and bit me on the back of the leg through my jeans!

As my mum is elderly she marks and bleeds easily and finds it distressing.  We have tried taking her toys away and only giving her them occasionally, but we find when she gets her toy she gets hyper and bites worse!

Some good advice from Srabe there at the end of the day she is an 11 week old puppy that needs to be educated and stimulated use the tips suggested and things will improve until you get to the 5month 6month stage when they become rat bags again then 12 months puberty. I have to wrestle with a 6month old boy that is seven stone i would thank the lord that you like small dogs and in the moments where you are getting shredded have a laugh about me who has to rugby tackle my DDb to the floor now and pin him down to clip his toes and he has been having that done since 9 weeks to get him used to it but he is now at that complete B*****d i am not going to let you phase.

welsh chick, am interested to know which foods would you recommend and why?

I would recommend the following site for well researched information on dog foods (it gives good information on label reading and explodes a few feeding myths):

http://www.dogfoodproject.com/index.php?page=main

Personally I do not like the make up of ProPlan. This is the ingredient list for adult chicken and rice:

Ingredients

Chicken (20%), Rice (15%), Maize, Dehydrated poultry protein, Maize gluten, Wheat, Animal fat, Digest, Beet pulp, Dried egg, Yeast, Fish oil, Calcium phosphate, Potassium chloride, Sodium chloride, Calcium carbonate, Minerals. Copper (as Copper Sulphate) 12 mg/Kg. Vitamin A 21000 IU/Kg, Vitamin D3 1600 IU/Kg, Vitamin E 155 mg/Kg, Vitamin C 70 mg/Kg. Antioxidant: Tocopherol rich extracts of natural origin.

-First named ingredient is 'chicken'. Great, but about 70% of chicken is water so when it is dehydrated (this is a dry food) it would be well down the ingredient list.
-Rice. As grains go this is one of the better ones.
-Maize is ingredient number 3. Maize is not a great food for dogs, being mostly carbohydrate, but also many dogs have a sensitivity to it.
-Dehydrated poultry protein. What is this?
-Maize gluten. More Maize!!
-Wheat. Another grain!!
-Animal Fat. What animal does this come from? Why is it not stated clearly (i.e. Chicken fat)?
-Digest. What's this??
-Beet pulp. Another filler, although it can firm up stools.

Don't get me wrong, there are far worse foods, but I think you could do far better.....

Smokeybear,

-I am aware that Chicken is the largest SINGLE ingredient, but I am also aware that it would not be once the moisture is removed.
-I am also aware that all grains CONTAIN carbohydrates, but whole grains are better than grain fractions and some grains are more digestible than others. I am feeding a grain free dry food at the moment (although it does contain carbohydrate).
-You correctly point out the grain splitting (4 of the top 6 ingredients are grains), which is why I am not a fan of this food.

like i said, i would recommend Pro-Plan, Nutro (who incidentally do dehydrate their meat before putting it in) or Royal Canin, for all the reasons i gave before, and carbs are needed by dogs although they provide no nutritional value, just like we need fibre even though we cant absopb it, to aid transition of food down the intestinal track.

my point about the blended intestines in the food was to show how companies use certain words to describe certain ingredients.