german shepherd pitbull mix

Question
We have a German Shepheard pit bull mix hes three months old and he is really bad hes not house trained and he likes to bite us hard and he does not listen to us when we tell him no what do we do about this?

Answer
Hello Cheryl:

Create training for housebreaking/potty training is the best way to go.
The standard calculation is that for every month old a dog is you can expect them to hold it for an hour.  So at 3 months your puppy will need to go for a potty break every three hours.  What effects this timing is - Eating & drinking - waking from a nap - playing, all require a potty break with-in 10 - 30 minutes.  Take your puppy outside on leash and stand still, puppies get easily distracted and forget they need to go, the owner then thinks they do not need to go and brings them back in, then the puppy remembers it needs to go and goes in the house.  So thus the need to stand still in one spot with puppy on leash and wait, to reduce the risk of distraction.

Anytime you cannot watch the puppy put it in it's create, as dogs will not mess their sleeping area.

Remembering that dogs communicate differently from Humans is important in training.
Scent, Body Language, and sound.  Often pet parents forget this and do not adjust their tone of voice or body language to that a dog understands.

Shouting or raising your voice, means your sound/tone just went up an octave from your normal speaking tone.  Therefore you just got high and squeaky as far as your dog is concerned and a High squeaky tone to a dog is a praise play tone.  So when you are angry or mad  your tone sends the opposite message to your dog.

When annoyed or displeased a dog issues a growl which is a low deep tone, thus when you need to let your dog know you are displeased lower your tone to get the right message across.

Body Language dogs that stand tall and square are showing they are confident and in charge, dog that make them selves look smaller are showing they are scared or nervous.  Your dog see you walk around so knows what you look like standing up and square as apposed to bending looking small.  So always match your body language with your tone.  Rapid irregular movement to dogs is an invitation to play, so by wagging and angry finger or shaking a fist at a dog, your are using the body language that means play, not that you are upset or angry.

Dogs are pack animals and a pack is a family, (Alpha Male and Female (IE Breeding Pair) i.e. Mum and Dad.  The rest of the pack are their offspring).  All dogs (Canine Familiaris) are natural followers, so learning and using good leadership skills is necessary.  Leader are Calm, Stable and Consistent.  Leaders Lead, Leaders do all things first, enter and exit doorways, etc.

I strongly suggest you enrol in Puppy classes and get hands on help with these issues, obviously, the messages you are giving your puppy he is reading to the opposite of what you hope.

Which would explain the not listening, he does not understand, the biting hard, possibly your actions are saying great lets play harder, or in his confusion he is defending himself as best he's learnt how too. Puppies rarely show true aggression, it is often a testing boundaries or miss communication between owner and puppy.  You need to get on the right track before he hits his teenage development stage, where things can turn nasty, if not handled correctly.