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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Umbran" data-source="post: 3805449" data-attributes="member: 177">Not an animal expert myself, but my wife is a veterinarian.  As others have mentioned, for a boy, neutering may help.The clicker training that P-cat mentions is good stuff, and worth looking into.  However, I have a few other notes, which amount to, "negative reinforcement is often ineffective".We must remember that our pets dont think as we do, and don't make associations as we'd expect them.  For example, let's take a look at freyar's "Pick 'em up by the scruff and shake gently" idea.  That may work.  But it may also translate in the critter's brain as, "If I bite, I get attention."  The trick to positive reinforcement training is to not try to stop an animal from doing something wrong, but instead to encourage them to do something right.  If your pet gets rough in play, being rough back isn't usually a good answer (that's just more rough play).  Instead, the better answer would be to stop playing.  This isn't negative - it is lack of positive.  The animal learns he gets something good (play) when he does something good (plays nice).  Playing rough will then usually fall out of Fluffy's lexicon as a bad idea that doesn't get him anything.There's also a major fact many folks with new pets (even if they've already had pets for a while) forget - you will have to change how you do things.  The animal will not be 100% moldable to your will.  Don't even try.  Pick your battles - change the animal for things you really need, and change your own habits some for other things.Consider - how hard would it be for you to rearrange some things, so that there were no major breakables where the furball could reach?  Knocking over things you are worried about gets a rise out of you - that's attention for the furball.  However, if you can ignore him knocking the things over (because the only available items are not breakable) he gets no rise out of you, and knocking them over may then cease to be a priority.</blockquote>

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