Many behaviourists believe that one of the roles of puppy classes should be to develop “bite inhibition” in dogs. Bite inhibition does not imply that dogs will never use their teeth to defend themselves, but refers instead to the ability of a dog to inhibit the force or pressure in the jaws when biting.
One of the theories about bite inhibition is that playing with other puppies has an important role in its development: When one puppy bites another too hard during play, the puppy that has been bitten will squeal and the play will stop. When this happens repeatedly, the puppy learns to mouth and bite more gently so that the game is not interrupted. Puppy class attendance (where pups get to play with each other freely and chew each other) can therefore help with the development of bite inhibition.
Another factor which may influence bite inhibition is the age at which the puppies are homed. I have noticed that many puppies that are homed at around 5 or 6 weeks of age have very poor bite inhibition and frequently break their owners’ skin during normal puppy chewing. This is likely because the puppy has missed out on a vital period of play with its siblings in the litter i.e. puppies start being more active from 5 weeks and start learning more through play from this time forward. If the pup is removed from the litter before it has had time to get feedback during play with its sibling, it will not have learned to inhibit the force of its jaws.
We can also play an important role in helping our dogs to develop good bite inhibition by giving them feedback when they chew our hands as puppies. Contrary to popular belief, it is better to teach puppies to mouth gently than to stop them from mouthing at all. If we never allow them to chew our hands, we have no way of encouraging them to be gentle with their jaws. If on the other hand, we allow soft mouthing, but stop play when too much force is used (say “Ouch!” and immediately remove your hand, fold your arms and ignore the puppy), we can actually have a very positive influence on developing gentle jaws in our puppies.
Of course, the real importance of bite inhibition is how it relates to the adult dog. No matter how well-socialised a dog is, things can happen to cause that dog to react in a defensive way and this may result in a bite. The reality is that dogs with good bite inhibition are likely to do less damage during such an incident than dogs with poor bite inhibition. At a seminar I attended with Dr Ian Dunbar a few years ago, he told us the true story of two dogs - one a Rottweiler, a breed most people are unfortunately wary of, and the other a Golden Retriever trained to be a therapy dog i.e. the type of dog that everyone loves and trusts.
The story goes that that both dogs were put in a situation where they felt the need to defend themselves: the Golden Retriever’s owner accidentally slammed the dog’s tail in the car door and the Rottweiler owner tripped over the carpet and stood on the dog’s hind leg, puncturing the dog’s flesh with the stiletto heel of her shoe. In one case the owner ended up in hospital as a result of wounds inflicted by the dog and in the other case, although the dog instinctively grabbed at the owner, there was not even a puncture wound. Surprisingly to most people, it was the Golden Retriever who ripped the muscle right off of the owner’s arm and the Rottweiler who only grabbed the owner’s ankle witout doing any damage. The point of all this, is that good bite-inhibition is just as important as good socialising.
Over the last year or so I collected some information via an email survey of dog owners to try and ascertain what impact the age at which puppies were homed, the source that the puppies were obtained from and whether they went to puppy classes or not had any impact on the development of bite inhibition. The table below shows the results:
| Source of Puppy | Homed from 8 weeks and onwards | Homed before 7 weeks | Of those homed after 8 weeks, % homed from 10 weeks and over | Recorded as doing damage to skin or biting very hard as puppies | Recorded as biting a person | % of bites to humans breaking skin | Recorded as biting another dog | % of bites to dogs breaking skin | Attended Puppy classes before 5 months of age |
| Registered Puppies (30) | 83% | 3% | 20% | 36% | 16.5% | 40% | 23% | 14% | 93% |
| Casually Bred Puppies (45) | 64% | 31% | 17.8% | 35% | 13% | 86% | 33% | 53% | 55% |
| Rescued Puppies (from shelters or strays) (25) | 80% | 16% | 56% | 24% | 24% | 33% | 28% | 14% | 44% |
The table compares registered dogs, casually bred dogs and rescued (shelter/stray) dogs in terms of age homed, puppy class attendance, intensity of puppy chewing and bites to humans and dogs (other than in normal puppy chewing or play)
While I don’t believe that I was able to conclusively prove my theory, I did find several interesting results:
1. Most registered breeders only home puppies from 8 weeks of age, while casual breeders are far more likely to home pups underage.
2. The vast majority (93%) of registered pups attended puppy class while just over half of casually bred pups and less than half of the rescued pups were taken to classes This seems to reflect a more responsible attitude from those who purchase registered puppies.
3. Rescued dogs were recorded as doing the least damage to skin during normal puppy chewing - this is possibly because a large percentage were homed after 10 weeks of age when bite inhibition had developed further through interaction with other puppies in the shelter.
4. Rescue dogs had the highest incidence of biting a person (perhaps not surprising due to their early circumstances and possible poor experiences with people), yet, while a fairly low percentage of all three groups are recorded as biting people, the group that had the far higher percentage of damage done (punctures or worse) during “bites” were casually bred pups with 86% breaking skin compared to 40% and 33% of registered and rescued dogs respectively. This may be due to the early age at which they are homed (therefore less chance to learn bite inhibition from siblings) or the poor attendance at puppy classes (where owners learn how to teach bite inhibition and pups continue to play with and learn from other pups).
5. Registered puppies had the lowest recorded number of bites to other dogs. This could be because there was excellent puppy class attendance in their case so they were well-socialised with other dogs. Once again, casually bred dogs had the worst record for doing damage to other dogs (punctures or worse) during bites which is likely due to their early homing and lack of puppy class attendance.
While in no way do I claim that this small survey is definite proof of what I have observed, it does seem to support my belief (and the belief of many other behaviourists) that puppies should not be homed before seven weeks of age and that ongoing play with other puppies in puppy classes is beneficial in preventing fighting amongst dogs and developing bite-inhibition.