When you say growling and nipping at people is it possible you could film some of it and post it ? The thing is , and I ' m not sure how familiar you are with raising pups already , some puppy vocalisations do sound ferocious for their little selves , but they are still very much learning how to conduct themselves in a new environment , and with a new species humans . To give you some context , your dog has been on planet Earth for fewer than four months . That ' s not a very long time ! The nipping , since you chose that word over something like chomping or biting , makes me think that he might have thought he could engage humans in play behaviour , but he wasn ' t quite sure how to proceed politely . He ' s at an age where socialisation is really critical , so I suggest you get moving and get him to experience as many POSITIVE interactions with other dogs and people as you can manage . Positive being the key word here ! If someone or some dog doesn ' t want to play ball , they don ' t get to meet your pup ! ETA Something like the Thanksgiving holiday is really overwhelming for a dog , particularly a young pup like yours . The mistake a lot of people make when socialising young dogs is that they think quantity quality . Not so . The best socialisation is when things happen at the pup ' s pace , every interaction is positive , the pup isn ' t allowed to become overtired and overstimulated two things that set in very quickly during a holiday , and the pup is given a quiet space to soak it all in soon after . You want to make each interaction count , not tally up a bunch of them but have the pup sort of in a free for all frenzy .