Pao is now 10 weeks old! Here’s are some photos and videos of him, and his fenced in corner, which I’m using until he gets his puppy toilet down perfect. Pao’s Corner

He’s outgrowing his bed. He was 1.3 kg when I got him on December 28, and this morning he’s up to 5.8 kg!

His puppy toilet training is going surprisingly well. He now gets everything in the toilet essentially 100% of the time. Last night it was cute. I came downstairs for a few minutes myself and he saw me, yawned, got out of his bed, strolled over to the puppy toilet, peed, and then went back to bed. Good boy!

This weekend I’m going shopping for a different kind of fence, with a sliding door, so I can let him get in and out easier when I am there to supervise.

I do need to get better control of his nipping and biting though. Tao (https://lerner.net/tao-1992-2006-movie/) never bit me or anyone! So I didn’t know this was “a thing” that needed to be dealt with. Pao isn’t vicious – he just nips when he’s playing and excited. I have little wounds on my hands and arms. 🙁

He’s getting better, I think. He can eat little snacks from between my fingers without biting at all. It’s just when he is excited and running around and jumping up and down (I wonder if I can recycle that energy to help power my house…) that he will bite.

Some people think this will get better naturally over time. Some people say, no way, this has to be taken care of now while he is still a young puppy.

There seem to be three groups of thought on this:

1. The “say ouch and ignore Pao for a few minutes” group. That supposedly gets the point across over time. I do notice if I shout, “Ouch” and just go still that Pao does seem startled and quiets down for a minute.
2. The “reward with treats and make sure Pao has plenty of gnawing toys” group. I try this as well. Just before I was happy to see him gnawing on a wooden puppy gnawing toy I got him, which is better than teething on the metal rails of his fence! He also has different chew toys.
3. The “use a tight collar and hold it on the side when he nips” group. Actually, I don’t know how large that group is, but saw a YouTube video suggesting it. The woman dog trainer in the video claims this solves the problem in a matter of minutes. I haven’t tried it yet because Pao has outgrown his collar (!) and I need to get him a new one. (He isn’t scheduled to for walks outside for about another month yet, after his booster vaccine.) This method also seems a bit punitive.

Anyway, any extra thoughts on dealing with nipping and biting are welcome. It might be just a matter of time at this point.

I’m sort of feeling if I can just get that out of the way things will go well going forward. Little kids used to stick their hand right at Tao’s mouth and all he ever did was lick them. I certainly don’t want Pao to bite anybody!