Need help with bad puppy manners & My 7 yr old

Puppies will be puppies won't they. As much fun as all that excited puppy play is I can understand the difficulties with larger pups and younger kids. Are you taking him to obedience classes at all? I would assume from your post that you have some past experience with training with the other dogs you had but classes can really help too with extra stimulation and wearing them out, for a while at least

I have a standard puppy who is just shy of 6 months in the class that I teach right now who is displaying similar behavior to what you have described. First we tried to redirect his behavior onto toys and also asking him for conflicting behaviors. You can't jump if you're in a down. It didn't work as well as it does for some dogs but what has worked for them is "time out". When their puppy gets to out of control they put her in her crate for 2 minutes to calm down. You dont have to use a crate for this, a pen or bathroom works just as well so long as there is nothing more interesting in the time out zone for the puppy to play with. (a side note, because they don't yell and scream and drag the dog to the crate she hasn't and won't form a negative association with her create - I know that worries most people who hear about time out) The key is short time outs, no hour "long you've been a bad puppy so sit in here" suff. Two minutes or so is enough so long as the puppy is not barking. They don't yell or get over excited about putting the pup in time out they just say "eh eh!" and if she doesn't stop asap they take her collar and she goes in. Mostly they were using this because their puppy was biting at clothes and mouthing on the hands and arms of their kids. It took about two weeks but the last class they had they reported that they hadn't put puppy in time out in three days so yay for them. Another part of their issue was lack of stimulation for their puppy. They added a few extra walks and a couple of trips to our local dog park as well as interactive toys to their weekly routine to help with some of her excess energy. The extra activities also played a big part in getting helping with the behavior.

I'm sure there will be other opinions and options posted as well. Good luck. There are as many training methods as there are dog trainers after all.

-Leia

Bauer was a real biter when he was that age... I read a book called "How to Raise A Puppy You Can Live With" and it was full of good tips for that... It talked about the psychological workings of puppies, they want to please you so bad but like a young toddler they can't control their excitement and need to bite/chew. The book recommended that every time the puppy starts biting or gets rough, stop playing with him immediately, don't touch him, don't look at him, nothing. You don't even need to say no, just ignore him completely and he'll come to find that that kind of behavior makes you turn away. It worked like a charm for Bauer and he kept the chewing to his toys. We always made sure he had LOTS of different toys, we'd hide certain ones and bring them back in sort of a rotation to keep things interesting.

That being said, over time we have not held up with the training very well and at almost 2 years old he is a very excitable dog. He doesn't ever bite but he paws a lot and rubs his head against us and our daughter, who at 2 is very easy to knock over and scare. We stop petting and ignore him when he starts acting this way. I hate to say it but he gets ignored a lot now... we're working on that!! We have had our share of frustrations with him lately but we've decided to keep working on it and trying new things. Behavior modification training is next. All I can say to you is to try to keep it up once you find something that works... I'd hate to see you end up struggling with retraining an older pup like us. Good luck, and feel free to pop into the forum if you need any more advice, want to post pics, or just want to brag about your poodle!!