Need help about biting / nipping as it’s painful and extreme
I have an Australian shepherd and he’s 11 weeks old as of today. I got him 3 weeks ago at 8 weeks old. Our biggest issue is biting and nipping us and he hasn’t even started teething yet and my pain tolerance cannot take it anymore. My legs are completely scratched up, my arms are covered in bite marks, he tears open skin and at this point I’m worried about possible infection because of how many open wounds I have. He bites HARD and constantly. If he didn’t bite SO hard I probably wouldn’t care but I’m constantly bleeding and I’m in pain.
He excels in many areas - no potty accidents and alerts us. He has no separation anxiety. And he also sleeps like an angel therefore I don’t think lack of sleep is the issue. He sleeps 10-11 hours at night, sleeps two 3 hour naps during the day and a 2 hour nap in the evening putting him at 18-21 hours of sleep a day. He is extremely independent and has no issue with hanging out in his pen playing with toys solo with no whining even if I were to leave the room.
The issue is when he is out of his pen and excited to hang out with me. Even after a well rested over night sleep (10+ hours) his idea of “play” with me is extreme biting. I redirect him to a multitude of toys of different textures, even a bully stick (that he LOVES and will go crazy on in his pen) but my arms and legs are significantly more fun for him at every given awake moment when he access to me outside of his pen.
He has no clue what human/dog play is. I’ve been trying to teach him tug and when he does play tug with me I treat him but he does not find it fun and will stop tugging and go for my arm instead. If I let him win easily he will take the toy away from me into a different room then return to bite me.
I tried fetch but he will only go after the toy maybe ~10% of the time and then take the toy to a different room or his pen away from me, and come running back once bored to bite me.
As far as enrichment goes for such a high energy and smart breed we do tons : large snuffle mats, an array of puzzle feeders, scatter feeds in the grass. Lots of training time. We tried flirt pools, herding balls, and the like but he still would rather bite me than bite those unless I am not present then he will enjoy it on his own.
He gets to run around in a fenced multiple acre property for fun but will still run up to me play bow and follow me biting excessively leading to going back inside into his pen.
Things we’ve tried :
leaving the room and saying “no bite”. He doesn’t care. He will find something else to do and bite us on return.
keeping a toy on us and putting it in his mouth when he bites us then rewarding with treat. Works less than 10% of the time where he will bite the toy for a treat but then return to biting us
putting him in his pen (also where he sleeps at night and takes naps so I hate to use it as a punishment) he doesn’t care and will usually just go to sleep or bite at his crate. If he just took a nap he will whine until we let him out because he’s wide awake and that will mean more biting once out. So we normally do something else like commands, lick matts, puzzle, sniffing, etc.
distracting him with commands. This will work! He will listen to commands and do them (sit, paw, spin, middle, heel, lie down, etc) but once he is bored with the commands he will go back to biting us.
we taught him what “get toy” is and he will go grab the toy for a treat but will return to bite us once the toy is dropped he does not grasp playing with the toy with us
I truly believe his biting is not from over tiredness / over stimulation but from his idea of playing with us.
He’s an angel during puppy class because when there is a lot of distractions (other people, dogs, etc) he likes to sit silently and observe and will check in with me for treats so everyone thinks he’s an angel.