Feet Biting adolescent Ebt

THansen001

This is bout finally the last behavior that I'm trying to curve. I reAlly just don't under stand it. Rex is cotton really good about a lot of things. Chewing no food aggression even all the way down to our two year old. We have four kids three girls 10, 4 , and 2 who interact with Him the most besides my wife. But he bites our 10 year olds feet all the time. Like this morning took him out she was standing in living room and he just walked up and snapped at her feet. He does this a lot. It causes her a lot of pain in several ways. She tries hard with him and she is the one that went to all his dog classes with him. Bout almost 20 weeks works over the course of 6 months. Any ideas its spontaneous and mostly just to her. He's not aggressive bc our 2 year old with stare him in the eye and swat his nose and he will submit to her even. Sorry for long post thought info was relevant. Thanks in advance.

Djammy

There seems to be something about EBTs and human feet. Our last EBT Fancy LOVED feet and loved to lick them.
Djamila now has mixed feelings. Most of the time she doesn't care about them, sometimes she wants to lick them. But she will go bananas when hubby teases her with his feet, poking her with toes, holding a foot under her belly etc. He has done that during play a few times - which revealed that she seems to take that as an invitation to a "foot-fight". She then chases the feet and bites them. The other day she even got one to bleed. I don't think that was intentional. However, it can happen and it hurts. So it is important to be able and make clear when enough is enough.

EBT's differentiate largely between people. If one family member does not like to be climbed at all the time on the couch, usually a few clear messages are sufficient for the dog to leave that person alone - at least in the older EBTs (2yrs +).
That however does not mean that they will NOT still climb over everyone else.
They have something I would call the one-on-one learning curve. And then there's the general training, which is just different.

Telling you all of this, because I have a strong feeling that your dog is not trying to hurt your daughter. It does not legitimate the behavior, but I still think bare aggression would be a much worse problem.
In fact, I actually think that he may think of your daughter as kind of a pal he is free to play with that way, because they interact so much, and he just tries to tease her and engage her in interaction by attacking the feet.

I don't know, if a ten-year-old has enough charisma to present already to clearly express by her body language and voice towards the dog that she does not want her feet to be chased after. If she is just pulling her feet away and trying to avoid the biting, he may as well feel even more encouraged to chase after them and just does not understand that she doesn't like it. If that is the case, if would be very important that you as the adult interfere every time you notice it, immediately take over the role of the teacher and make it clear to the dog that biting is just NOT welcomed in your house in general.

Well, that advice of course is just because of the impression I got from reading your post and just a remote diagnosis - I may as well have gotten it all wrong. So, if this continues you should definitely ask someone for help who is able to take a look at the situation in person.

THansen001

That's a good interpretation of it. Ten is old enough I think. Hell our two year is third On the pecking order under my wife. She will stand her ground and tell him no. I can see how he is taunting her to play or interact. That makes sense. He did run back to his kennel and I went to him and he snarled and bit my hand once. But like always I make a fist and shove it in his face to show him biting in it aloud and has no affect. He has bit my several times early on and I show no emotion even if it hurt some to show I'm the boss. Idk if that's right but it seems to work. Just like his puppy biting I squeezed his nose some and told him no and he learned fairly quick. He is getting better all the time getting a "soft" mouth. Learning how hard to use his mouth with different things and different people. He plays different with all members of the family. He knows our play is diff then our youngest. I'll try to get her to just pay attention and try to work with her more. She is kinda nervous to tell him no after that happens unlike our youngest. Maybe he picks up on her hesitation and uses that to his advantage.

Djammy

She is kinda nervous to tell him no after that happens unlike our youngest. Maybe he picks up on her hesitation and uses that to his advantage.

Yeah, and maybe not even with bad intentions in mind. He might as well think her hesitation means that she is kind of ok with what he does.
In my experience any laughing or hesitation are often interpreted as approval and in order to really make clear that you DON'T approve, now and then you have to come up with your best "grave yard" voice, look really stern and come across sincerely angry in order to get through that clown attitude and reach the bully mind to tell him he is overdoing it.
Once they REALIZE they are doing things wrong the way they try to have fun with their people, you will likely experience them all apologetic instantly (which can also hurt, because they really want to make up, kiss, lick and hug ....)