Ouch!

For the first time (and I hope the last time) Marley bit me intentionally.  There have been a lot of scratches and bits, but they were incidental to his activities.  This one was very deliberate.

We had been gone all day (him, too) and only home a short while.  He asked to go out (he's getting better about that later and later into the day), but then he fought getting the harness on.  We harness him even though we have a fenced yard because of all the lawn mushrooms.  We don't know if any of them are harmless and don't want to find out the hard way.  So, putting on the harness to go potty is just standard procedure here, until he grows out of eating everything he gets near.  The only exception is the dark-hours pee breaks, when we slip a loop of kitty collar on him, go a few feet of the porch, pee and come back in to go back to bed.

This time, though, since he'd been in the harness nearly all day, he didn't really want it on.  He slipped to his side, making it hard to get the harness on him.  The, to make it worse, he rolled to his back making it virtually impossible.  As I was trying to maneuver him back into position he reached around and sliced the back of my hand.  That is totally unacceptable.  I gave him 3 quick, light slaps to the muzzle.  He didn't make a sound.  He knew he'd done wrong.  Normally, I would not do that to a puppy, but like a mother dog, there are certain things I can't allow.  If he bit his mama, she'd either gently bite him or grab his neck and shake him to let him know he crossed the line.

He stopped fussing, we got the harness on and went out for him to do his business.  I gave him the usual praise "good boy!" for piddling and pooping outside.  Those are separate activities.  Only the bite was bad.  I think it will probably not happen again now that he's tried it and found out it's definitely not allowed.

We can't have a dog that bites when he's not happy.  No one should have a dog that deliberately bites humans when it's unhappy.  That's just the way a dog's life is.

Note: Less than an hour later he needed out again and there was no issue with getting the harness on him.  Lesson learned, I think.