Puppy behaviour

Hello,

I have a 14 week old male staffy. I have had him from 5 weeks old as he was abandoned by his owners. We have been trying to get a handle on his behaviour for a while and it just does not seem to be working. When he bites we yelp and if he is in a calm mood he will let go and lick you but if not, he will continue and start growling and jumping all over you while biting. When we tell him to leave things he is chewing most of the time it will not work, however, on the odd occassion it does. He is quite a handful and i know he is a puppy but just not sure what is normal or how to handle it.
We have enrolled him in obedience classes to see if they help as well.
Our main concern is the biting. It makes us not want to let him out of his crate or the kitchen as when we do he go's for it straight away. Especially with our children. They are3, 6 and 8. We have tried teaching them to turn away from him when he bites but he continues and it makes it difficult for them to get awau so we end up putting him back into the kitchen.
When he is good he is a lovely dog.
Just need a bit of help so any advice would be much appreciated.
Thank you

Hi there, welcome to the forum. It would be great if you could introduce yourself here...
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Please don't shut him away in the kitchen. It's ok in small doses, but if you do that all the time he will actually be worse because he'll be so excited to be with you!

Can I ask you what sort of exercise he gets & what you feed him on? It could have a large bearing on his behaviour.

I know this is why i needed advice on his behaviour as i said he can be really good and i want to include him as much as possible in the family. He has 1 tin of pedigree puppy food spread out over three meals a day with a sprinkling of bakers choice biscuits. At the moment he has 3x 10 min walks as he still unsure of outdoors yet. He doesen't seem to like to be out for too long

Right, well the Bakers & Pedigree will be making him hyper for a start.

I know Bakers is marketed as a great food, but it's one of the worst on the market! It's so full of additives & E numbers it's unbelieveable.

I would seriously advise you to change it to a better food as soon as possible. Wainwrights (from Pets at Home) or James Wellbeloved are good, mid-priced food and are low in additives and with a high meat content.

The exercise is ok, but you could probably increase it a little. The general rule of thumb is 5 minutes lead walking per month of age, per walk. So he could probably have 15 minutes or so per walk on lead, plus a little free running on soft ground (grass or sand) as long as he's allowed to rest whenever he needs to.

You say you yelp when he nips, but what do you do then?

Thank you. Once we have yelped if he calms down we give him attention and say good boy if he doesen't bite. If he continues biting we try yelping louder then if that does not work we put him in the kitchen

Some pups actually get a bit more excited by a human yelp. It may help to try saying "No" in a firm, deep voice & then turning away & totally ignoring him - don't even look at him until he's calm.

The trouble is, at the moment he may not be able to help himself. Think how you would feel if you drank 6 cups of espresso straight down - you'd be pretty hyper! Well, that's roughly what Bakers does to dogs!

Thank you soo much for the advice i'll try that. I'll let you know how it goes.

when you extend the walking build in some nice off lead play for another 10-15 mins , you say he is unsure of outside so make it fun for him and it tires him out too tired dog = good dog , ofl ead play does not count in the 5 mins per month calculation / advice as they can regulate themselves

For the food both of mine have been brought up on wainwrights and have done really well , we had a short spell out to another food but only because of boredom , back on the wainwrights now.

My OH was a childminder when both of ours were pups and mega important to have them interacting as much as possible with the kids this is part of their development

Loki was horrible with biting, he didn't make any improvement at all for a good while, and I thought it'd never get better, but with consistency (and a bit of patience) it does. If he continues to bite after you yelp, put him in another room. Only for a couple of minutes, they eventually understand that biting means playtime and affection stops. The food will definitely be adding to the hyperactivity though, so agree with changing that he'll calm down as he gets a bit older too. But at the moment he wants to play a lot, and so he probably gets so excited he forgets the rules. It's down to you to stay with it and he will get there in the end.

Any pics of the pup?