My pup is a big nipper, but he's really young (9 weeks) and getting better.

The other day he was really hyper and really went after me. He grabbed my hand, so I said "OW!" and turned my back to him and started to walk up the stairs to ignore him for a minute. As I was stepping over the gate, he jumped up and bit me in the back of the knee. I was shocked, and it hurt!! I turned around and screamed and crawled up the stairs. I tended to my wound, and when I came back downstairs, I tried to interact with Toby. He came up and licked me but seemed to kind of shy away.

Since that incident, he seems afraid to get really rowdy around me. When he sees me, he'll be much more calm than when he sees, say, my husband. He still comes to me and plays and lays in my lap to chew on his bone, but he doesn't get nearly as hyper as he used to.

Is that a good thing, or a bad thing? Did I scare him, or teach him? Did I do irreversible damage? I know it's really easy to permenately scare a puppy that young. Is it possible I did?

Thank you!

I'm new to protection training, just learning about it for my new 9 week old male GSD (8 weeks old when I got him), so am very interested in hearing the experienced people reply to this one. It seems that the way he bit you, in the back of the knee, would have hurt a heck of a lot and your reaction was probably normal and couldn't be helped (did you have long pants on?). His licking you sounds like he got the message and was sorry. I've heard litter mates scream when bit too hard, a message that the biter went too far. But I'm also concerned about if I have too sharp a reaction to a play bite (which it sounds like what your pup was doing, not "aggression"...he's just a pup). Don't want to mess up my pup either. Guessing breeding has something to do with whether or not pup recovers from the reaction. I'm imagining your pup will recover and go on his merry way, biting once more. My pup grabbed hold of my wrist hard and shook it to "kill" it, lol. It hurt but I did the grin and bear it thing with a verbal ouch, threw a ball for him and he was happy. My wrist recovered too. <img src="http://www.leerburg.com/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />