# Teething in puppies



## Jason Moore (May 3, 2009)

When puppies teeth, how long does this period usually last.Yesterday I let my oldest pup play with my youngest pup and say blood on the small pup and thought she bit through her skin. The older pup always bites hard and has left some scars on the other two. Any way I guess I should get to my point. When I stopped them from playing to check out the smaller one I noticed the older ones (5months now) gum line was bleeding. How long does this usually last and I've just been using a soft leather rag as of late to play a little tug and use as a reward for my come here exercise. How minimal should I keep the tugging right


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## Chris Michalek (Feb 13, 2008)

generally when your dog is 6mo old it's ready to start working. Don't do any bitework when the dog is teething, you'll get mushy grips and other garbage. Just play fetch.


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## Jeff Oehlsen (Apr 7, 2006)

Some people will back tie, and use a flirt pole during this time and frustrate them, and then put them away without a bite.

On the other hand, puppies are clumsy, and may have just clashed teeth, and there you have the blood. Too hard to guess, and not really that important if they are just playing.


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## Megan Bays (Oct 10, 2008)

Jeff Oehlsen said:


> Some people will back tie, and use a flirt pole during this time and frustrate them, and then put them away without a bite.
> 
> On the other hand, puppies are clumsy, and may have just clashed teeth, and there you have the blood. Too hard to guess, and not really that important if they are just playing.


I back tie and build frustration with my puppies (no bite) and they have clacked their teeth so hard that they start bleeding. I always put them up after this though, and wait a few days before I do this again.


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## Jeff Oehlsen (Apr 7, 2006)

He has AB's. You are probably ****ing up. LOL Not something I would do with the pup you have.


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## Megan Bays (Oct 10, 2008)

Jeff Oehlsen said:


> He has AB's. You are probably ****ing up. LOL Not something I would do with the pup you have.


Are you saying to not back tie with mine? 

Any reason?

BTW just trying to learn more, so please don't get mad for me questioning you ;-):lol:.


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## Jeff Oehlsen (Apr 7, 2006)

Go ask on the GSD resources board. THey can help you. LOL


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## Megan Bays (Oct 10, 2008)

Jeff Oehlsen said:


> Go ask on the GSD resources board. THey can help you. LOL


Jeff....

I'm asking you, because you brought up the potential flaw in my training.


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## Jason Moore (May 3, 2009)

He was just ****ing with me but now that you've showed interest he's gona **** with you to. LMAO thanks guys


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## Megan Bays (Oct 10, 2008)

I know he's messing with me, but I'm one of those that believe every once in awhile he'll tell you something worthwhile  .


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## Jason Moore (May 3, 2009)

Megan McCallister said:


> I know he's messing with me, but I'm one of those that believe every once in awhile he'll tell you something worthwhile  .


Yeah to do that though you have to take the 6 most helpfull words in his past 8 post's put those together yourself to make a proper sentence and then your like wow this in one smart dude. It's like little rays of magic sunshine that hit you in the head all at once.Basically Jeff speeks in Riddles. LOL


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## Jason Moore (May 3, 2009)

Jeff Oehlsen said:


> Some people will back tie, and use a flirt pole during this time and frustrate them, and then put them away without a bite.
> 
> On the other hand, puppies are clumsy, and may have just clashed teeth, and there you have the blood. Too hard to guess, and not really that important if they are just playing.


Thats possibly what happened. It was just play. But she does love to play tug for reward some. Probably has more toy drive than food. So I guess instead of tug. I'll stick with treats for a while. And I was kinda thinking along the lines of what you said Chris with the mushy grips it's basicaly what I was thinking.


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## Howard Gaines III (Dec 26, 2007)

When the puppy is teething and ends about 6 months of age, doing no bite work is wasting time in my book. I still allow it to work, the difference is you don't pull and jerk the rag!!!

The animal still has to eat and uses the teeth to do it. Common sense says to not do anything which may damage the tooth set. Bleeding is a light sign to stop. Soft cotton rags and TARGETING is OK by me.


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## Jason Moore (May 3, 2009)

Well today I let her play with the orbee ball. It's soft she seemed to enjoy chewing on it a little on the way back from retrieves. She mostly wanted to sling it around while on her way back . Her gums are still bleedin so I thought maybe the chewing was making her teeth/gums feel better so I didn't try and correct her for it for now sense she was bringing it back. And was doing sit and platz perfect, I even got her started getting ger to stay in both positions some for a few seconds at a time. Every day I'm seeing improvements in them.


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## Chris Michalek (Feb 13, 2008)

i play fetch with a nerf football during that stage


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## Dan Brigham (Jul 23, 2009)

I would go with Chris and Megan on this. I do a lot of fakes but no bites during teething. I want no pain associated with biting anything hard. Mushy and chewy grips are the result of not following this regimen.
The time you lose while teething is more than made up in not having to fix grip problems later. 

Take the pup tracking and work on that for the next 6-8 weeks, that will keep you busy and keep you from doing something negative during a critical period of development.


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## Jason Moore (May 3, 2009)

Thanks Dan and Chris. I gotta go get some more treats this evening any way so I'll run through the toy section and find me a small nerf foot ball. And yeah dan I deff need to get back on track with the tracking. I haven't been doing that lately just ob for the most part with fetch mixed in.Here is another question. I understand that all things good are to come from me therefore I don't leave them any toys to play with.But if I found a chew toy that was soft would this help her with the teathing process. Or maybe find some kind of Treat that might aid in this. I dunno just a thought.


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## Chris Michalek (Feb 13, 2008)

just get the regular sized one. Get the football instead of anything else because of the way it bounces. Becareful she doesn't chew it to shit and eat the bits or you'll have nerf poop.


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## Jason Moore (May 3, 2009)

Nerf poop lol Speaking of which I was cleaning out there pens a few days ago and noticed some tenfoil in my males poop. At first it scared me for one I don't know where it came from and the other obvious it can't be healthy for a dog to poop tenfoil. But It's been around a week now and no adverse healt effects. So I guess I'm clear on that. But 10-4 on the big nerf football.


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## Howard Gaines III (Dec 26, 2007)

Dan Brigham said:


> .... I do a lot of fakes but no bites during teething.* I want no pain associated with biting anything hard. Mushy and chewy grips are the result of not following this regimen.*
> The time you lose while teething is more than made up in not having to fix grip problems later...


So if the dog is using its mouth, as all do, to explore and discover new things, what then? Eating semi-hard food shouldn't make them all wacked out over teeth pain. Why back off light rag work as long as you are yanking and lifting the puppy around?

Pain associated with biting IMO doesn't cause crap bites; poor targeting and imprinting at an early age does, and so does excess defense applied! Macho decoying in an attempt to prove how bad the puppy is only helps to promote bite issues down the road. Eating or testing anything hard as puppies do...I don't buy that!!!=;


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## Jason Moore (May 3, 2009)

Not to add to the arguement one reason I've decided to halt any tug work and such with her for now is for one,I'm not that experienced with tug work to begin with as we all know. And I don't want to pull to hard or something and possibly imprint a bad experience with her on bite work. I do still give her a toy for reward but any stress put on her teeth she puts on her self for the toy is not on a line she is.


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## Dan Brigham (Jul 23, 2009)

Howard Gaines III said:


> So if the dog is using its mouth, as all do, to explore and discover new things, what then? Eating semi-hard food shouldn't make them all wacked out over teeth pain. Why back off light rag work as long as you are yanking and lifting the puppy around?
> 
> Pain associated with biting IMO doesn't cause crap bites; poor targeting and imprinting at an early age does, and so does excess defense applied! Macho decoying in an attempt to prove how bad the puppy is only helps to promote bite issues down the road. Eating or testing anything hard as puppies do...I don't buy that!!!=;


You do it your way, I'll do it mine.

I let them eat regular dogfood and raw chicken parts (yeah, even frozen) but since they are naturally doing that anyway, haven't seen it interfere with grips. When I said *raw* chicken parts, I don't mean cooked!!! Cooked causes those bones to splinter and possibly make holes in puppies guts, VERY BAD!!!!! Raw chicken bones are pliable and they do help the teething go faster. The reason I use frozen is when I forget to thaw them and they still need to eat, I found they liked it just as well as thawed. Easier for me who can be forgetful about getting things out to thaw. I like leg quarters, they are cheap and have plenty of meat and I can buy them in bulk.


Biting food and grips are entirely different. Food is a must for life. Dogs don't grip their food, they bite, chew and eat it. Gripping is a variant, however it is not the dogs natural way to do things with their teeth and is the way that man has decided is how we are to use them in K-9 and sport work. 

I have done bitework during teething as you describe, however it only takes a small mistake by a helper to cause a long-term problem. I prefer to avoid that problem. I always try to prepare for the worst-case scenario and often by that time, my pups are working on some greener helper that is more likely to make those type of mistakes.

If you have perfect helper work all the time and are working with a great helper, go for it. As for me, I am still doing bitework imprinting and want absolutely nothing to be to chance at this point. Bitework goes quicker than the other phases anyway, so why rush it and screw it up when it is unneccessary???


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## Bernt Lundby (Mar 27, 2009)

My puppy is now 4.5 months old and has lost her puppy teeth. We did bitework up to 4 months age (she lost some teeth on the sleeve, also broke one of the incisors) but never seemed to mind. We took a couple weeks off during the last stage of puppy teeth falling out, and are now back to normal bitework with the adult teeth developing. As long as the dog does not seem to be in pain (regripping, letting go etc) I can not see a reason for not doing bitework. Her grips continue to be full and she wants to dig in deeper (builds bite naturally). It all depends on the sensitivity on the individual dog I guess?


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