21/01/2022
Walking with a friendly, playful dog is a wonderful thing, but we need to ensure that they are playing naturally and properly, to avoid any accidents. 🐶
Nice, social play between dogs should be consensual; this means they should take it in turns to be the submissive one and there should be regular natural breaks caused by the dogs and not our intervention.
We should watch how the dogs first greet each other; it should be relaxed and not tense. One or both dogs may begin to ‘play-bow’ as an invitation to play. At this point they may both start playing, or one may walk away as a refusal to play, and this should be respected by the other dog.
Dogs will generally learn how to play with their litter-mates, but some dogs do not have this benefit and lack the important social-skills required at an early age. If you have a dog that is very pushy, or does not stop, or doesn’t allow natural breaks in play, then we should control this environment for them, and we can do this by first working on any over-excitability under-threshold, and then by getting a good reliable recall when around dogs off-lead.
All dog play is simply a ‘mock battle’; each dog should give regular signals to the other that it is just a game and nothing serious. These signals will include sneezing, yawing, sniffing etc. and are designed to help keep the play ‘fun’, but of course sometimes one of the dogs may become a little over-excited and the play may spill over into something more serious. This is why we need to watch the play to ensure that it remains fun for both dogs.
If either dog is becoming too pushy, or just continuously chasing, then we should intervene to ensure both dogs’ safety. 👍
