April 21, 2011
My 11 week old Rot is constantly biting at my pants legs. I do not want to do protection work with him. What can I do?
Full Question:
I received and viewed your "puppy" video. Thanks, it helped, although I already knew most of it from having a Doberman and GS years ago, though the refresher was appreciated. However, I now have an 11-week old Rottie. He is friendly, outgoing, and learns quickly. However, when we walk by, he will "latch on" to our pant legs or legs if we have shorts on, the jeans will rip as he will not let go until the command of "no bite" is given. We want to stop the original bite. We hadn't planned to do anymore than obedience training with him. I don't believe the biting of legs will be used for personal protection training though you never know. Any suggestions? 
Ed's Answer:
What you are seeing is prey drive, if you squelch this too much it will have a negative effect on training. To train with motivation you need prey drive and/or food drive - 65% of adult dogs do not have enough food drive to train with.
This prey grabbing will go away in the mean time you need to re-divert it to something else - a ball on a string. So when he bites the pant legs, you correct the dog (say NO! and correct) but then go directly to a ball on a string with him. If you correct too hard (beyond his temperament) he will not play after the correction. Next time do not do it so hard.
Then when the dog is older you can teach it obedience with a toy as a reward. You can read more about this process in my other articles.
This prey grabbing will go away in the mean time you need to re-divert it to something else - a ball on a string. So when he bites the pant legs, you correct the dog (say NO! and correct) but then go directly to a ball on a string with him. If you correct too hard (beyond his temperament) he will not play after the correction. Next time do not do it so hard.
Then when the dog is older you can teach it obedience with a toy as a reward. You can read more about this process in my other articles.
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