I posted a week ago about my puppy getting aggresive when he was picked up. I want to thank the comments because even if I didnt answer, my family and I used all the ideas you gave us.
Even though its only been a few days we've gotten a massive change, and I thought it would be good to let others know in case they find themselves with the same situation.
One comment mentioned that maybe he was too young to understand that he wasn't supposed to do that. That is true, he was a about a month old when he was rescued by my dad during a bad storm, we never really found the mom or siblings. It was just our boy floating around. He's now 2 months.
Anyways, in the first 2 days we started giving him treats pre-pickup to make him understand that it was a good thing. This partially worked because he started coming around people to be carried but he still got snippy. We also decided to end playtime every time things got too rough or when we noticed the pup got too tired.
Now, the thing that really made a change was that apparently he hated being carried the way my family was doing it. They usually just put one hand on his upper chest and the other on his lower stomach, this is how we carried our girl, she never had any problems. BUT, this boy doesnt like having his hind legs dangling. He wants to have support for them. So now we carry him by putting a hand on his chest and the other under his legs, kind of like how we used to carry our heavy elder dog when he couldn't move anymore.
It wasn't really that it was people specific, the only reason he wasn't snippy with me was because I would carry him facing towards me with a hand on his back and on his butt, so my body was technically supporting his legs
My dad was over the moon when he found this out, he did several experiments to confirm it. My pup has a new favorite human, and my place was taken but I guess its a small price to pay to see him happier.
submitted by /u/Dizzy-Lobster-4278
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