This thing was bothering me for some time so I finally came here for help. Hopefully I'll find some answers here. Joy is quite the active and playful pup and is currently around 11.5 months old. However, I've noticed that most other dogs seem to be scared of him. He is not aggressive but he does jump a lot once he is sure that the other dog will not harm him. I've seen three types of reactions. 1. The dogs love each other and will tumble around with each other. (This happened with a Golden retriever, once we took care of the jealousy issues on both ends) 2. The dog takes a 'down' position when he sees Joy (this is generally an older dog and I've never seen Joy do this to any dog). Joy accepts the invitation and after a short sniffing session, the older dog stands still and allows Joy to bounce around and play with him, except an occasional lick to the face. It was clear that neither of them were feeling anxious or anything. The older dogs seem to love the company and didn't want to part ways (one of them threw an absolute tantrum in the middle of a road when his owner tried to take him away). In fact, in one such case, the owner told me that he was surprised at such a good reaction from his lab towards a new dog, that he has never seen him being so friendly on first meet. 3. The third reaction is what worries me the most. In this case, the older dog comes forward to sniff each other but as soon as they do that Joy wants to play and the other dog hides behind the owner. And it has happened many times. They are mostly older labs. The most shocking was when my pup was only 8 weeks and the other dog (a black lab) was more than 2 years old. As soon as he saw Joy, he hid behind his owner and won't show his face. This really upsets Joy and often he ends up crying to go play with the dog but I can't let him go scare them more. Is this normal for dogs to be so scared of a pup. I can understand smaller puppies being cautious, but I don't understand the behaviour of the older ones. I really want Joy to have more friends and have a good time but I don't know what to do about this. And sorry about the long post.
Er, are you just allowing your boisterous young dog to go up to every other dog you come across - which he then wants to play with and jump all over? You are just allowing him to 1) become a bully and 2) potentially get told off by the other dog quite severely - leading to fear on his part and possible reactivity as a result (since the greatest cause of aggression is fear) and 3) learn that other dogs is amazing and to be expected when you are out and about - rather than contact with and focus on you. You might want to have a read of this article I wrote: https://dogsnet.com/over-friendly-dog/ Do you have a reliable recall? Are you able to recall him off another dog, BEFORE he reaches them? If not, that is what you need to be addressing - and implementing...
Thank you so much. I read your article and I have to admit it's quite alarming to realise what's actually happening. I think I see a few reasons why this behavior has been reinforced in Joy. Like being the only dog in the house and the only type of play with other dogs being rough play. No, he is not allowed to jump all over any dog that doesn't seem comfortable with it. I lead him away from that dog before he can lung at him. And as soon as we are walking away, my pup seems to forget all about the encounter and focuses on the walk again. He won't even look back at the other dog. Of course, he is on leash, so I'm not confident if he would leave at once if he were off-leash. Although, Joy doesn't lung at just any dog. If he doesn't know the dog very well, he stands several meters away and regards him, just like the other dog. One time he barked at the older one when he tried to step towards him to warn him off. But with most dogs, they even get closer to sniff at each other. The problem seems to arise then, before any jumping occurs. And the one time I talked about in my original post, when he was only 8 weeks, I was holding him up in my arms. So no lunging at all. I have heard similar stories from others where older dogs show anxiety near a young puppy. Can you please explain this behavior? Is it a related issue to what you explained before? There are several people around who are confused about this and can find no answer on the internet. I can't say I have a recall at all at this point. He used to be very good on walks, both on and off the leash and would come back from other dogs on command when he was younger, but all the good behavior seems to have evaporated in the past few months. It happened around the time he turned 7 or 8 months old. I did read somewhere that this age is difficult, so I have some hope. We have been facing other problems too, like leash pulling and lunging on people, but he has started to calm down again the past couple of weeks. There has been no lunging at people the past couple of weeks. I hope he calms down enough that he stops lunging at dogs too. In the meantime, I have started on basics again, like loose leash walking and focusing on me instead of getting distracted with everything.
That's the issue you need to be working on. Too often people bring up inter-dog issues (like dogs humping other dogs, dogs playing too roughly, play tipping over into fighting etc etc etc etc) - but the fact is that none of these problems would even exist if people had a reliable recall on their dogs and deliberately avoided walking in places where they are going to be in close proximity to other dogs. No, what happens at this time, is that a baby puppy's need to stay near you as attachment figure, evaporates because they mature - and any recall you haven't trained properly and well, will not remain. Not because they are pushing boundaries or adolescent, just because you are no longer able to rely on some natural baby puppy desire to stay close to you. But nothing is going to get better without implementing good training. I would not really let a dog meet other strange dogs on-leash. There is no need for this - they don't need to sniff each other - and many problematic things can occur: The tight leashes affect the dogs' behaviour and cause them to behave more tensely, or to pull even more into the leash and into the other dog's space. And dogs feel like they can't escape or get away, on leash, so are more likely to feel fearful. I would be working hard to teach my dog that, when on leash, other dogs are out of bounds and we never meet them - and I'd be using Look At That to achieve this: https://thelabradorforum.com/threads/look-at-that.22184/ Puppies look and behave weirdly to many adult dogs who have not met many puppies before. Just like many dogs are fine with people but afraid of children. Many is the time I've heard clients tell me that they asked someone if their dog was "ok" with other dogs, the other owner said yes - they allowed their puppy to meet the other dog - and the other dog attacked the puppy. Because the other dog was not used to puppies. MOreoever, puppies have poor social skills often, and behave in obnoxious and rude ways to older dogs - so even a dog which is used to puppies, isn't necessarily going to want to interact with one. I wouldn't want to interact with someone else's 3 year old child....!
