# Puppy lunges and snaps at faces



## Mizbhyvn74

Why is my dog doing this? What can I do to prevent him from doing it? He lunged at my 8 year old just now and hit her smack dab in the face. He does this whether you are at his level or not.


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## DustyCrockett

I can answer question #1, but #2, I have no idea.

It's a fun game for puppies. He gets a little older, he'll only do it when you make a funny noise he's never heard you make before. Or, at some random time when you aren't expecting it.


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## Mizbhyvn74

He actually stunned my daughter he hit her so hard. She was just sitting there petting him, not really talking much, just off and on to me. She didn't make any odd noises or provoke it. He's done it to me quite a bit, if I sit on the floor to visit with him, I have to be really watchful he doesn't connect his teeth with my face. He'll also try and do it if he comes to see me while I'm sitting on the couch.


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## Shell

How old is your puppy? What breed/mix and how large?

My foster pit had this bad habit when I got her. She was doing it playfully and would leap to lick and nip at my arms and face (yep, she could reach my face while I was standing straight up). Here's what I did to stop it...
1- harness on her whenever she was supervised. Leash attached to harness. This gave me a safe way to control her and prevent her from jumping.
2- I would stand on the leash with enough slack that she couldn't jump far but wasn't pinned down. I asked her to sit and slowly fed her dry dog food dinner piece by piece but ONLY when she was sitting nicely. If she jumped, I said "Ah ah" not harshly but in a stronger tone than a regular voice. Then I asked for "Sit" again and gave more kibble once she was sitting.
3-all her meals were fed by hand during training sessions. 
4- anytime she jumped at me during play or while putting on her leash, taking her outside, etc, I turned away from her and held my arms close to my front so there was nothing fun for her to grab for. Its "Make like a tree"
5- when we were just relaxing, she still had her harness and leash on, I would sit with one hand on her harness lightly holding her so that she couldn't reach my face. If she tried, I would turn aside and be still. Once she stopped trying to lick or nip at me, I turned back to her and petted her and called her a good girl in that higher pitched "baby talk" voice that dogs respond to well generally. 

Basically, the dog thinks it is fun and you have to make it un-fun in a calm manner. Redirect, focus him on something else, take away the opportunity


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## WheatenDaneMom

Yes, how old is he???


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## Mizbhyvn74

He is about 4 months old and is a shar-pei/shephard mix. 

We have taken to leaving his leash on in the house while supervised because of other discipline issues. According to Cesar Milan giving it a quick tug and saying No..or whatever word you'd use is supposed to work. 

I've tried turning away and ignoring him but he is very vigilant and does whatever he can go get to your face.


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## WheatenDaneMom

when he lunges at your daughter's face... does he do it once or will he go for round two?


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## Mizbhyvn74

He tries to do it over and over really. Until he's stopped, or you move away. He also has started barking the second she tries to enter the room he is in.


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## Shell

He sounds like a puppy 
Exercise (lots of short walks if he has had his shots), training sessions (several short ones over the day), and playtime with other well-socialized dogs if possible. If you know someone that has a well trained, dog-friendly adult dog (who is preferably larger than your pup) then invite them over to let the dogs play. The adult dog will help teach bite inhibition so that if your pup does make teeth contact, he won't bite down.

Teach "Quiet", basically just get the tiny treat or kibble out and when he starts to bark, say "Quiet" and only give a treat when he is silent. Very useful in general for when a dog alert barks at noises etc.

Do you have a puppy training class you could take him to? A mix of socializing and formal training would probably help a lot.


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## qingcong

Mizbhyvn74 said:


> We have taken to leaving his leash on in the house while supervised because of other discipline issues. According to Cesar Milan giving it a quick tug and saying No..or whatever word you'd use is supposed to work.


If you want to go the correction route, you need to change the order. First say "no" and then give the tug. However, I would advise against that method because your timing must be spot on. If your timing is off, you end up creating a host of other undesirable issues and you don't do much to actually correct the behavior. Because you're here to ask advice, chances are you don't have the understanding on timing to pull it off.

What I would do, since you already have the leash on, is to use the leash to lead him to a crate or a confined area until he calms down again. The idea is to teach him that this particular type of excited behavior makes him lose access to humans. The other way to teach it is to simply go "Ah!" and get up and walk away. Both of these will work and you can use both methods if you wish.


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## DustyCrockett

Pretty sure CM would say, change the state of mind *before* the behavior occurs. I'm convinced that would work, but you'd have to be an expert at reading your dog's body language. 

Not that I'm a CM expert or anything, but I do watch his show quite a bit, it's one of those rare programs I can watch with my dogs. In the same way I used to watch "America's Next Top Model" with my daughter, purely as a bonding experience of course.


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## qingcong

DustyCrockett said:


> Pretty sure CM would say, change the state of mind *before* the behavior occurs. I'm convinced that would work, but you'd have to be an expert at reading your dog's body language.



What you refer to there is called classical conditioning, and yes, classical conditioning works. If behavior is purely driven by a primal emotion such as fear, happiness, anger, then you can use classical conditioning to alter the emotion and reasonably expect the associated behavior to change. In this case the behavior is mostly a product of operant conditioning, so approaching it from an operant conditioning perspective makes more sense.


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