Our 7 month old Cane Corso is like a shark, he rips our clothes and leaves bruises on us with his jumping and nipping. Help!

Hi! We have a 7 month old male Corso pup that we got when he was about 15 weeks old from a good breeder. I don’t think a lot of training was done prior and we’ve been constantly working with the dog thru the crazy puppy phase. We can’t seem to break him of this jumping and nipping that he does to me, my husband, and teen son. It seems to come out of nowhere and once he starts it’s hard to redirect without blurring the lines of rewarding bad behavior or redirecting. He’s good driven so it’s usually a bone or bully stick to divert him for awhile, sometimes we crate him til he can collect himself. But he’s a big boy, of course, and his nips are leaving us battered and bruised, clothes ripped, and tense feelings afterwards. He’s a sweet boy but these bouts of random shark attacks are rough. The breeder swears by Cesar Milan and said to scruff him hard under the chin and sweep his legs out from under so he goes on his back then hold him there til he settles down. Not a fan of that. Help!

Cindy's Answer

Since he's already 7 months old and a large, powerful boy I would definitely start by changing up the way you live with him. I agree that Cesar's methods would not be recommended.

If you notice this shark attack behavior starts at specific times or in specific areas of your home, it could be that he's getting overstimulated(much like a young kid getting overly wound up) I've raised a large number of working breed puppies and notice that a lot of them go through a similar wild, wound up tantrum type outburst when they really need a mental break. I use the crate for episodes like this and just let them relax and chill out.

I don't allow my puppies, young dogs or adult dogs that may have some behavioral issues to have free run of the house. They are either in a crate, contained with a kennel or baby gates or on a leash with me at ALL times. If you have a leash and collar on him when he's out with the family, you can use the leash to interrupt the bad behavior. He also needs to learn impulse control and rules for how he's expected to behave. He's only going to get bigger and stronger so I would not allow this to go on any longer.

View our course on How We Manage Dogs in Our Home and a couple of other videos for you to study. Even though he's likely getting big, he's still mentally immature so you need to break the training down into small lessons that don't bore him and give him plenty of downtime after training sessions so he can process the lessons.

He will need to understand that this behavior is NOT ok and preventing more rehearsals of this while you build a communication system via training is key. Giving him mental exercise is as important as physical activity,