Puppy Dominance

Factual Questions
1

I’ve been helping out a neighbor who has two dogs, he’s been away and I’ve been feeding them and playing with them.

One is a collie/shepard mix and he’s 12 years old. The other is a puppy a lab and he’s about 5 or 6 months old.

One thing I noticed right away was that the little guy was bossing around the old dog. He was nipping and jumping on him and they were clearly playing. Well the puppy was and the older dog seemed “bothered” but was tolerating the puppy. The dog (collie/shepard) used to like to spend the day just sitting on the porch watching the people go by.

So at first I thought the puppy was just, you know, hyperactive, like all puppies are and wanted to play. So in that way the puppy was bossing around the older dog.

Then I went to feed them. The dog gets, dog chow while the puppy gets puppy chow. It’s dry dog food

I put their dishes down and the dog started eating and the puppy looked at his, then walked over growled at the big dog, who immediately backed away, and the puppy started eating the dog chow.

Well I picked the puppy up and moved him back to his puppy chow. The dog started eating and then the puppy immediately went back over to the collie’s dish and growl. The collie backed off without a fight.

I finally seperated them and put the puppy in another room with his food. And he ate it right up, with no hesitation

So my questions are is this a case of one dog being dominant even though he’s just a puppy. The collie dog doesn’t seem to be angry when the puppy harrasses him. He just kind of puts up with the puppy playing with him

My main question is the food. The puppy clearly likes his puppy chow and when he’s by himself he ate it right up. But when when the puppy and dog are in the same room, the dog with his dog chow and the puppy with his puppy chow, the puppy won’t eat it. He wants to bully the big dog.

Is this wanting to take the big dog’s food a case of proving his dominance?

2

Definitely. Obviously, the adult dog is not having a problem with it. He may actually feel more secure having a dominant pup around him. Just doggish drama.

3

Canine instincts tend to have the adult dog putting up with all sorts of crap from what he perceives as a puppy, but the younger dog intimidating the older one away from the food bowl is a little more beyond the pale. It can happen I guess.

4

What do you know about the collie’s personality? Some dogs are just naturally very submissive. I think my mom’s dog would back down from anything that thought to challenge him.

5

The collie is very friendly. He’s the kind of dog, that sit out by the fence all day and waits for people to come along and pet him.

The puppy is very friendly too. The only bit of aggression I’ve seen is when the puppy takes over the dogs food. He has puppy chow and he will eat it, so I don’t know why he wants to eat the dog chow, except he wants to prove he’s dominant over the dog.

The collie dog is also old he’s 12 so he’s pretty mellow and even when the puppy plays with him, the dog looks like “Jeez what I have to put up with.”

6

The collie may think that the puppy is a baby of his owners, and thus a higher rank than he is. He’d have to show submission. Keeping them separated at chow-time seems like a very good idea to keep up with. I would tell the owners then they return just to make sure that the puppy doesn’t overeat, eat adult food, or end up causing the adult dog to go hungry. I would not worry about non-food dominance issues, though; they both would be happier to sort out the dominance themselves: in fact, it sounds like they already have.

7

My younger dog used to do that to the older (we got them both as puppies almost exactly a year apart). He seemed to have put him firmly in his place within a couple of months, and we gave up trying to fight it fairly quickly.

Oddly, now that the younger has approached adulthood, he’s started falling down the dominance chain. While the younger still claims all of the bully sticks as his own, my older dog has proven himself quite capable of taking him down when he wants to (such as when he’s interrupted during barking like crazy at deer). And about a month ago, the older started getting first pick of the dog bowls’ contents.

8

I just thought it was interesting, cause today I switched bowls. I gave the puppy DOG chow and the dog PUPPY chow. And it made no difference, the puppy immediately went and growled and got the dog to back down. So it isn’t the type of food itself, it’s that the puppy wants to show who’s boss

I think it’s so interesting the way the little puppy can boss the big dog around and he dont’ care.

When I let them out they play together fine. The dog chases the puppy and wrestle around and both their tails are wagging, of course the dog gets tired of it in about 10 minutes and the puppy keeps jumping on him. So then I play with the puppy and the dog looks glad to be shed of him.

The puppy clearly is the dominant one, it’s cool to me that the idea of dominant dogs doesn’t come from size or breed apparently, cause the dog doesn’t seem at all distressed to wait for the puppy. And of course both are well fed so it’s not about the food.

9

The same thing happened with my dogs, except that they’re about three years apart. The older dog let the puppy have her way for two months, then decided he had enough. Strangely, the tables turned after the puppy got bigger than the adult dog.

10

Yup, dogs will get along with no problem, as long as they both agree on who’s boss. Once that’s out of the way, there’s no reason for them to not be friends.

11

The young of the species, whether canine or human, will keep trying and testing to see what they can get away with and they need to be taught their rightful place in the scheme of things.