Agreatdog, breeders of Iowa Chow Chow, Shih Tzu and Sheltie puppies for sale.

As a leader, you must recognize, understand and respect those who you are leading.  Failure to do this will cause a revolt and an overthrow of the leader.
When puppies are born, they are premature.  They have no vision, no hearing, and little sense of touch.  Scent is the only sense they have for two weeks.  Nature teaches the puppy what is the number one sense it needs to rely on is smell. Touching comes after a few days. Typically two weeks after birth the eyesight, develops and finally hearing.  So the hierarchy of senses to a dog is scent, touch, sight and hearing.
When humans first see a puppy, they will typically go, “oh what a cute puppy” reach out and touch or pick it up. So sound, sight and touch, no smell. This to a puppy is backwards to what Mother Nature has taught them and can be viewed as aggression by the puppy from a bigger stronger human.  This causes stress from the time of introduction and it goes downhill from there. All its surroundings and recognizable smells and noises will be gone in a new home. The puppy must discover and renew all this on its own at its pace.
When you first introduce your puppy to it's new home, it first should be shown where it is to go potty.  Let them smell and get aquainted with that area.  Then place the puppy in the middle of the room and walk away. Keeping the corner of your eye on the puppy at all times, so nothing unexpected happens, don't talk to the puppy, don't touch the puppy and don't look the puppy in the eye.  Let the puppy , at it's own speed, explore and discover new smells and sounds. As the puppy becomes OK with that area, do the same with another room in the house, placing him in the middle that room.  Again no look, no talk, no touch, let the puppy explore that room. After the puppy becomes familiar with everything, let it go potty again and then heap the praise on the puppy and start playing and interacting with it.

When I first got my puppy, she was the sweetest thing, always ready to give puppy kisses and happy.  Lately, she has turned into a real demon.  She barks, sometimes viciously bites and is very unruly. Where did my puppy go?

When a puppy is born, and is in with its littermates, it has to compete for milk and seek its place in the group.  Although these puppies are days old, they are very aware of the competition and their natural sense of selfishness will crowd out the weak ones and the strong get stronger, the weak weaker.Typically the mother will monitor this and will stop the pushy puppies and help the weaker ones.  She will do this by biting the puppy gently on the neck.  The puppy being helpless and defenseless at this stage of life recognizes this as a correction and backs off.   As the puppy matures, it will always look for a leader or mommy figure.  Dogs are typically followers.  However, if there is no perceived leader, they will happily assume the role of the leader.  They remember the times with their mother, when she was the enforcer by biting and will assume that role with humans. 

When a puppy barks, bites and is generally unruly, it is looking for guidance and a leader and in its own mind is assuming the role of the leader. If humans do not toe the line, the biting gets worse as the enforcement escalates. Dogs should never be the leader over humans. Human’s #1, Dogs #2.