Mollie is learning better ways to get attention than chewing on feet. I start out with more boring feet with just socks and no movement. When she tries to chew my feet, I interrupt her ("ah ah ah" while clapping my hands) and redirect her to another activity like playing with a toy. She is quickly figuring out that sitting in front of me is going to get her a lot of attention. I make sure I reward her when she does this and, at the least, I tell her how fabulous she is and rub her ears. If I have a toy handy, I'll play with her. When she got better at this I would try to tempt her by wiggling my feet. She's doing great with the socks!
So now on to something more tempting like fuzzy slippers. These are harder for her. She does great when my feet are still but struggles when they are moving. I'll work with her some more on my still feet and build up to fuzzy slippers moving. When she's really solid on that, I'll move on to wrapped feet in bright colors as I know that is very tempting for her.
We are reinforcing this behavior in a lot of other aspects of her life too. She is doing a great job sitting for her meals, sitting to go outside, sitting to come back inside, sitting before I put her leash on, and sitting for attention. I try hard to catch her offering the behavior so I can praise her every time she does it. She is much more likely to repeat behaviors that pay off for her so I want sitting for things to pay off much more than demanding things does.
To help her be more successful I'm making sure there is plenty of things for her to chew on. Her jaw is still growing and she'll be losing her baby teeth soon so she has a physical need to chew. If I catch her laying on a dog bed chewing on a chew toy, I slowly stroke her and tell her what a good girl she is.
Sinbad is even willing to give her the bone...maybe so she doesn't chew on him.
All this hard work makes a girl tired. She's even starting to enjoy snuggle time on my lap. Such a nice way for us to end our day.
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