All three dogs are making progress living together. Lincoln loves to play with them. They are starting to like playing with him too. However he does not know when to stop. He's 20 lbs and they 14 and 12 lbs. How do I let him know it's time for a break ? I don't want to scare him or make him think it's not okay to play.
Hi @Jade, try playing games in which your Lab must play with you as the traffic cop. For example, start teaching retrieve. The Lab brings it back to you rather than pouncing on the other dogs. Or play Simon says. You direct each dog to do an obedience exercise. Sit stay for all three. In doing so, the Lab learns it's okay to be calm around other dogs. Next time down stay. Vary the exercises. It doesn't all have to be designed for impulse control, but an emphasis in that direction will not harm. Teach your dog to be calm around other dogs and that you're the leader who interacts with all of them.
It’s also useful to teach a cue word to stop play when it gets a bit too much, eg ‘enough’. It’s good to hear they’re beginning to bond with each other.
Imagine being shut in an elevator with someone else's three year old child. That's what it's like when an owner brings home a new puppy, for existing members of the household... As a result, you need to ensure that adult dogs have space away from the puppy - that the house is separated through use of stair-gates, or puppy cycling in and out of crate etc - but having all the dogs loose together 24/7, (or anywhere near that) is just not fair on the older dogs, who didn't ask for the young upstart to appear in their homes... You might also want to get a puppy tag line or house-line - a lightweight 2.5m leash without a handle on the end, which the pup can trail around the house. You can grab it if the pup is terrorising the older dogs and redirect onto a toy or hold onto it to keep the pup out of their reach until he is busy with something else...
We are dealing with this issue ourselves at the moment albeit not with smaller dogs but much larger Labs - four of them. Roamin' is a vicious player and is quite good at sending the older ones racing for the door and giving me the "help me" look. I second the use of shut doors and baby gates as well a a crating schedule. When Roamin' is crated, the other dogs can use the entire first floor of our house (but will always end up in the office with me pushing my wheeled chair in a game of who can get closest to mommy). While he is out of the crate, there is supervised play either outside or inside for which I set a timer so that I can end it before Roamin- who is a vicious biter with the other dogs but not with we humans - gets all ratcheted up. Then Roamin' is gated in my office with me for training etc. We have to let them interact in the whole of the downstairs, but until he learns to lie down with the others (which we work on off and on all day every day) and to not always be instigating roughhousing, the gates, doors and crate allow the other dogs not to be under constant attack from the puppy. It makes for a long day for me and I can hardly wait for the day when all that is needed is his crate schedule, but for his safety (it takes a lot for a Labrador to lose their temper but it does happen), and for the sanity of the older dogs, it is just part of the job of training house rules. Our Cain is only 14 months old and he would love to be with the puppy all the time but even he makes a run for the gate after about 10 minutes of being with crazy Roamin'!
