Hey guys,
I'm wondering how to tackle this really annoying behaviour.

Walnut ALWAYS place with his mouth open....errrr...is just really mouthy is general. He doesn't bite at all - ever, but like to get his mouth close to your hands.

This usually happens when he's really excited.

When it does happen, we stop play immediately, which works fine. Except as soon as we start to play again, he gets mouthy

He's 11 months old, and has been mouthy since he was a tiny pup.

Any suggestions of things we can try? It's not terrible because he never closes his jaw. We just hate getting our hands all wet and nasty.

Thanks for any tips.

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My husband calls this "leads with the mouth." We are slowly but surely teaching Casper to grab a toy when he gets happy. It actually works pretty well. I can point at a toy and say "get your toy" and he'll pick it up. When I come home after work, he'll almost always grab a toy now. Obviously, our house is littered with toys.

I forgot to mention that he's okay with there are toys around. Walnut does the same thing as Casper. As soon as we get home, or gets excited, he hunts for his toys.

The problem is when we go to someone's house. For example, if I drop by a friends house with no toys...he's mouthy. We also put his toys away (sometimes) when he's done playing. If we get him all excited with no toys around, he's mouthy.


If we take him for a walk, and we bump into a human friend that he knows, he'll go straight for his leash and just hold it in his mouth.

I think part of the problem is that we've taught him to always play with toys throughout his teething stage (instead of our hands, pants, etc).

Do we really need to keep something in our pocket everywhere we go?

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I tried taking a toy on our walks and that was just to complicated for me. He gets excited, too, when we meet people. I've trained him to sit quietly as they pass by, but then as soon as they are gone - boing, straight for whatever. Sometimes jumping, lately grabbing the leash. In the scheme of things, grabbing the leash is not so bad. He gets better all the time, we're down to one bounce now.

Sometimes I pick up the toys and put them in the Official Toy Bucket. Casper goes and pulls them out, even searching for a favorite one. I've never had a dog that cared so much for toys, let alone one that would pick toys out of a bucket. So I don't think it's about having taught them to play with toys. It's just the way they are. I also never had to deal with mouthing and teething from any of my other dogs. I'm pretty sure this is a retriever thing.

Last week he got a hold of my pants and dragged them downstairs. I think it's time to harness that skill.

Thanks so much for the feedback.
So I guess this will be an ongoing training excercise - which is fine by us, since we train everyday anyway.

You're right. I think it may be a retriever thing. And we have somewhat learned to harness the skill. He helps us take the garbage to the refuse in our condo, and also take things I give him and delivers them to my wife (usually covered in slobber).

I'd be interested to see how you progress, and I welcome any tips or tricks you may come across.

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