First, thanks everyone for your great feedback regarding my last post! It was tremendously helpful. I do now have another question...

As you may or may not have read, we have a 16 week old craaazy mal puppy She is VERY high drive and LOVES to bite. She is perfect for what we are training her for (Ringsport). I have had great success teaching her basic commands such as sit, down and come. We are, however having difficulty with getting her focus and teaching her to heel...I don't expect miracles at this young an age but I would like to start troubleshooting now...

Here is the issue...Cyrrah LOVES to bite...we cannot ever scold her for biting as it will kill her drive. At this stage, if she goes for our arms or legs, we just redirect her to a toy and praise heavily when she bites what she is supposed to bite. Apparently, nothing tastes as good to her as my skin...I think she likes biting me so much because of the reaction she gets - I try to be as stoic as possible when she is biting so she will get bored and give up but it rarely works (I'm too much of a wimp)...

Anyhow, we have started teaching her to heel and the problem I am running into is that I lose her focus almost immediately. She gets too excited about tugs or treats to walk next to me without jumping and then, about 2-3 paces into our heel, she decides she wants to bite and then always jumps up and gets me right in the backside....I have huge welts to prove it! So my question is...how can I work on her heel without her biting me (keeping in mind I cannot correct the biting else it will kill her drive...)...any thoughts are definitely appreciated!

I can't speak for very many dogs, but...there's a limit to the abuse I was willing to take. And I don't think trainers of any discipline are expected to endure welts on their asses.

Drawing a line at a certain level of force directed to my bare flesh did not seem to diminish his enthusiasm for bite material later on.

Certain materials = fun and games.

Purposeful attack on my calf = a boring and uncomfortable session of lifting his front feet off the ground with a flat collar til he gets the message.

I hear you .. my crazy Mal puppy was the same way, it (the maligator behavior) started to mellow out at about 4-5 months. You have to just keep redirecting and start correcting.

You are not going to kill your dogs drive by stopping her from hurting you as long as you do it consistently and fair.

Read Mr Frawley's ebooks on his "Philosophy of Dog Training", "Theory of Corrections", "groundwork to becoming your pup's pack leader" etc there is lot's pertinant info here that will help you out. I know they helped me.

http://www.leerburg.com/dogtrainingebooks.htm

Thanks!