Why Your Puppy Bites (And Why “No” Doesn’t Work)
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Your puppy bites everything. Your hands, your clothes, your face, the furniture, the children, themselves. The biting is relentless, painful, and makes you question whether you've adopted a small velociraptor. Everyone tells you to say "no" or redirect to a toy. Neither works. Here's why puppies bite, why it's not aggression, why your current strategy is failing, and what actually stops it. Spoiler: those needle teeth have a job to do.
Why puppies bite
Puppies bite because they're puppies. It's not aggression, dominance, or bad behaviour - it's development.
Teething - Between 3-6 months, puppies lose their baby teeth and grow adult teeth. Their gums hurt. Biting relieves pressure. Everything goes in the mouth because everything might help.
Exploration - Puppies don't have hands. They investigate the world with their mouths. That texture, temperature, taste, resistance - they're learning what things are by biting them. Your hand, the table leg, the remote control - all data.
Play - Puppy play is bitey. In a litter, puppies bite each other constantly - faces, ears, legs, tails. It's how they learn bite inhibition, practice coordination, burn energy. When they play with you, they're doing what worked with their siblings: biting.
Attention-seeking - You're boring when you're on your phone. You're interesting when you yelp and engage with the puppy. Biting gets a reaction - even a negative reaction is attention. The puppy learns: biting makes the human interesting.
Overstimulation - Puppies have two modes: asleep or chaos. When they're overtired, overstimulated, or haven't burned enough energy, the biting intensifies. They're not trying to hurt you - they're dysregulated and biting is their outlet.
None of this is aggression. Aggression is about creating distance or controlling resources. Puppy biting is about gathering information, relieving discomfort, or engaging with you. The intent is completely different.
Why "no" doesn't work
You say "no." The puppy pauses for half a second, then bites again. You say "no" louder. Same result. You say "no" and push them away. They bite harder.
"No" doesn't work because:
It's not information - "No" tells the puppy what not to do. It doesn't tell them what to do instead. They still have the drive to bite (teething, exploration, play, energy), and you haven't given them an outlet. So they bite again.
It's inconsistent - You say "no" when they bite your hand but laugh when they bite the toy. You say "no" when you're working but tolerate it when you're playing. The puppy can't extract the rule because the rule keeps changing.
It's attention - For an attention-seeking puppy, "no" is still engagement. You've stopped what you were doing and focused on them. That's reinforcing, even if you're annoyed. The puppy learns: biting gets attention.
It escalates arousal - Shouting, pushing away, moving dramatically - all of this amps the puppy up. You've just made the game more exciting. The biting intensifies because you've increased their arousal level.
Saying "no" feels like you're doing something. You're not. You're just making noise while the puppy continues the behaviour you're trying to stop.
Why redirection often fails
"Redirect to a toy" is standard advice. Puppy bites hand, you offer toy, puppy bites toy instead. Except half the time they ignore the toy and go straight back to your hand.
Why redirection fails:
Timing - If you offer the toy after they've already started biting you, you've just reinforced biting you. The sequence the puppy learns is: bite hand → toy appears. You've accidentally taught them that biting your hand produces toys.
Value mismatch - Your hand is warm, reactive, interesting. A rubber toy is not. If the toy isn't higher value than your hand, the puppy won't take it. You're offering them something boring in exchange for something fun.
Energy mismatch - A tired, overstimulated puppy doesn't want a toy. They want to sleep. Offering toys when they're dysregulated doesn't address the actual problem.
Redirection works sometimes - when the toy is genuinely more interesting, when your timing is perfect, when the puppy is in a state where they can learn. But most of the time, it's just delaying the inevitable next bite.
What actually works
Bite inhibition, not bite prevention
You can't stop a puppy biting. You can teach them to bite softly. This is bite inhibition - the most important thing puppies learn in the litter before you take them home.
When puppies play with each other, they bite hard, someone yelps, the play stops. They learn: bite too hard, fun ends. Over hundreds of repetitions, they learn to modulate pressure. By 8 weeks, they've learned not to bite their siblings hard. They haven't learned not to bite you hard yet - that's your job.
How to teach it:
When the puppy bites too hard, immediately go completely still and boring - hands in pockets, no eye contact, no talking. Wait 3-5 seconds. Then re-engage. If they bite gently, play continues. If they bite hard, you become a statue.
You're teaching the same lesson the litter taught: hard bites end the game. Gentle bites keep it going.
Don't yelp - it works for some puppies but makes most more excited. Don't push them away - that's engagement. Just become instantly, utterly boring.
This doesn't stop biting. It teaches the puppy to control the pressure. That's the goal - by the time they're adult, you want a dog who knows how to use their mouth without causing damage.
Management: remove the opportunity
Tether the puppy - attach their lead to furniture so they can't chase you around biting your ankles while you're cooking.
Use baby gates - separate yourself when you need a break. The puppy can't bite you if they can't reach you.
Enforce naps - overtired puppies bite more. Puppies need 18-20 hours of sleep per day. If your puppy has been awake for more than 60-90 minutes, they need a nap. Crate them, cover the crate, let them crash. Most "behavioural problems" in puppies are just tiredness.
Appropriate outlets
The puppy needs to bite something. Give them things that satisfy the drive:
Frozen carrots - cold, hard, relieves teething discomfort
Frozen Kongs - takes time to work through, tires them out
Puppy-safe chews - bully sticks, yak chews, things that last
Snuffle mats, licki mats - redirects oral fixation into calmer activities
The more appropriate outlets they have, the less they'll target your hands.
Training an incompatible behaviour
You can't bite and do something else at the same time. Teach behaviours that are incompatible with biting:
Sit - can't bite your hand if they're sitting for a treat
Go to bed - can't bite your ankles if they're on their mat
Tug - channels biting drive into a structured game with rules
When you see the puppy gearing up to bite, cue the incompatible behaviour before they start. Prevention, not reaction.
The timeline
Puppy biting peaks around 12-16 weeks (teething is worst here), then gradually decreases. By 6 months, most puppies have learned reasonable bite inhibition. By 8-10 months, they've mostly stopped.
It's not instant. You'll have good days and terrible days. Progress isn't linear. But it is temporary.
The honest truth
Those needle teeth exist for a reason. They're sharp so that when puppies bite too hard, it hurts - which teaches them to stop. If puppy teeth weren't sharp, they wouldn't learn bite inhibition. The pain is the feedback mechanism.
Your job isn't to stop the biting - it's to teach the puppy what's acceptable. Soft mouth good, hard mouth bad. Toys yes, hands no. Calm biting okay, frenzied biting ends the game.
"No" doesn't teach that. Management prevents the behaviour but doesn't teach the skill. Bite inhibition training teaches the skill. All three together - management when you're tapped out, training when you have capacity, and letting the puppy learn consequences when they bite too hard - get you through it.
The biting ends. The puppy grows up. And in a year, you'll have a dog with a soft mouth who knows how to play without drawing blood.
But right now: baby gates, frozen carrots, and enforced naps. You'll survive it.