Hi all, I am having trouble with one aspect of my Bella’s (17 weeks old) personality that seems to have just appeared out of nowhere. I am doing a lot of training with her, have her in a puppy training class, and have her signed up for the next stage of training. I ask our trainer about this behavior and his suggestion is not working. So, here is my cry for help…
Bella is a wonderful dog…until she gets the zoomies, at which point she turns into a maniac. She either runs up to me and starts nipping at me (I assume that is an attention thing, she has torn little puppy teeth holes in many of my clothes) or if I am playing with her, she will nip at my hands and arms, anything she can get her teeth on. She only does this behavior with me; she knows I am her Mommy. Our puppy trainer said to cry out in pain and stand up and ignore her (this creates more problems because as you know, when they have to zoomies there is no reasoning with them) so then she starts jumping up on me and pawing and nipping. Since she is such a great puppy all the rest of the time, this behavior makes me down right angry. I have heard that you should just send them outside when they have the zoomies, but if I go out there with her, it’s just the same behavior but outside, and if I send her out there alone she just stops zooming and stands at the back door looking innocent. Her bad behavior seems to happen at about the same time every day (right as we sit down for dinner, of course). So, I have been trying to plan to be at the dog park when it sets in (when we are in that environment she just runs around with the other dogs and doesn’t bother me) but I can’t go to the dog park every day for the rest of her life. Anyway, I would appreciate any suggestions you might have. Thank you!