How do dogs play?

In My Humble Opinion
1

When I was growing up, we only had one dog at a time, and now that I’m all growed up I refuse to have more than one pet at a time, so our dogs are only children.

Our next door neighbor has a new puppy, and after some days of Buck (our dog) and Butch (their dog) exchanging pleasantries through the fence, our neighbor decided to drop his dog over for a playdate.

Ivyboy is standing ready with the hose should things get out of hand, but they seem to be having fun, as far as I can tell. There’s no growling or snarling, but a lot of biting(?) and rolling each other over. Butch seems to like chewing on our dog’s chin, and Buck seems very interested in sniffing underneath Butch’s tail, and Butch has rolled over on his back so Buck can lay on his belly. I guess that’s normal, right? Butch has accepted Buck as the dominant dog? What do I need to look for in case things get out of hand?

I say this because a former co-worker had three dogs, one bitch and two males (father and son) and one day, after years of peaceful co-existence, Daddy Dog and Sonny Boy got into a huge fight and Daddy ripped out Junior’s throat and killed him. Can things turn that quick?

2

Until last year we had three dogs (Bandit has since passed on of diabetes and kidney failure), all males and close to the same ages. I have seen things turn quickly from play into “spats”, but even terrible sounding fights have resulted in few injuries. I think in all the years the three were together we had two instances of 2-3 stitches from these 'spats". All our dogs were neutered, so fight tendencies may be lessened. Un neutered dogs will probably fight more ferociously, don’t dog fighters keep their dogs unfixed for this reason?

Dogs do a lot with body language - what you are describing with the dogs laying sounds a lot like a submissive/dominance thing. it may be due to the other dog being a pup and he may challange that in the future. I learned a little of dog body language and I was able to ward off what I percieved as potential ‘spats’ just by observing and sensing a change in the dogs’ moods.

3

Holy crap! What kind of dogs were they?

So much for carrying on the family name.

4

Pits? Bulldogs? Mastiffs? Something like that. According to my co-worker, they’d been sweet as sugar up until then.

5

Pits? Bulldogs? Mastiffs? Something like that. According to my co-worker, they’d been sweet as sugar up until then.

6

If it’s a game, you’ll see some “please play with me” behaviours displayed, the most noticable of which is the “play bow”. One dog will invite the other into a game by leaning forward with his or her front legs, bowing, in fact.

Different dogs seem to have different play modes as well. My two, big dogs wrestle each other very roughly, there’s lots of rolling around, whacking each other with paws and biting at each other. But the bites are inhibited, so although it looks pretty rough, there’s no damage.

I had a visiting dog here and he loved to be chased, he’d wrestle for a little bit, but would end up instigating a big game of “keepers off” with the others.

Although games can turn rough, and occasionally over-stimulated dogs can become aggressive with each other, it’s not usual for that to turn into a fight to the death, unless there are already underlying issues between the dogs, or you’ve got more than two dogs involved and pack behaviour takes over.

I think with the dogs you’ve described there would pretty certainly have been signs that the owner either ignored or didn’t understand. I’d also guesst that neither of them were desexed, and that the younger dog was reaching maturity (with big dogs this could be at two or three) and the father suddenly saw him as a rival.

Usually the minute one dog gets a bit over the top, the other one signals time out (usually by yelping and getting out of range), which is how puppies teach each other not to play rough.

If you think the game might be getting a bit rough, concentrate on teaching your puppy to come to you for a treat. Chances are that the other dog will see the pup getting a treat and will want one too, so ask them both to sit and give them each a treat.

Practise this with both of them, so if you want to interrupt the game, you can do so, it will be good training for the dogs, and help you relax a bit.