Negative Reinforcement for Zeus

Question
My boxer dog, Zeus (9 months), has a tendency to do some pretty rotten - yet typical - Boxer things.

One of the most annoying and bratty things he does is nip at my heels/ankles/feet. I know Zeus is only trying to play, but he isn't aware that he has teeth now, and that it hurts us when he does it. Of course, whenever I would shout "No," he would misinterpret it as me egging him on.

I decided to try something new. I read about a lady who worked at an animal hospital and did late shifts. There were a few dogs that were restless and barked, not because they were hungry or needed to go potty, but because they were bored.

She would take a Dixie cup and sit in front of those dogs' areas. Whenever it would needlessly bark, she'd throw a little cold water in the dog's face. Needless to say, a lot of those dogs stopped barking and began to rest.

I decided to try and apply a similar principle, but not as crude as with a cup. My sister is a beautician, and she has those little spritz bottles. I took one, filled it with water, and whenever Zeus would nip at my heels, I'd sprits him between the eyes. Initially, this worked... but soon, Zeus would want to chew on the spritzer and seem completely unaffected by the spritz itself. Also, I can tell that he's intelligent solely because he knows that if I put the spritzer down, I don't have the same power over him.

What can I do to stop this behavior? I tried giving him a ball or trying to get him to do things that are positive, but he'll easily remember what he was doing before, and return to the negative behavior.

It seems as though Zeus is a bit too smart for the traditional trickery that trainers pull...

What should I do? :-/

Kindest regards,

Dan Marques

Answer
Hi Dan,

Zeus is smart, which means you have to be even smarter than him.  That's not always easy with a Boxer!! :)  

There's an excellent article about teaching bite inhibition here that may help with Zeus' nipping behavior:
http://www.jersey.net/~mountaindog/berner1/bitestop.htm

As you've found, punishment doesn't tend to work well with Boxers: they're smart enough to know when you can and can't give it (they do the same thing with collars; if you don't have a training collar on them, they know you can't give them a collar correction); they're fairly stoic to pain, so the standard "correction" often has little to no effect on them (and most owners don't want to go to the lengths sometimes required for them to react to the pain); and they're creative thinkers so will find a way to do what works for them. The key to training a Boxer is to set things up so that what works for them is what you want them to do.  

Some good sites for you to visit, with many articles on addressing this and other common behavioral issues, are:

http://www.clickersolutions.com/articles/
http://www.shirleychong.com/keepers/
http://www.clickertraining.com/node/834
http://www.clickertraining.biz/

Also, you might be interested in these books:
"Bones Would Rain From the Sky" by Suzanne Clothier
"The Other End of the Leash" by Patricia McConnell
"The Culture Clash" by Jeanne Donaldson
"Family-Friendly Dog Training" by Patricia McConnell
"The Power of Positive Dog Training" by Pat Miller

Good luck!