Hi, we brought Poppy home three weeks ago and very slowly introduced her to Holly our older Labrador who is 6 years old. Going into the forth week they will sit side by side for treats!!!! and have a game of 'tug of war' but Poppy still jumps up at Holly who then growls back and will then bark at her, I am worried that she is being too rough, she is a very well behaved dog and has never in the past been at all aggressive. Holly sleeps in her bed in the lounge and Poppy is in her crate in the kitchen, and I never leave them together unsupervised. Is this all normal and will the be best friends one day????
Holly is doing the right thing, setting the boundaries. My Tatze lets the pups do anything they want. Zaba sets the boundaries by growling - this is fine. The pup needs to learn which dogs she can't jump all over.
It is totally normal. My 7yo dog growled at the puppy when she'd jump at/on him, bite his beard and ears, etc. She learned not to do that (well, she still sometimes forgets! she's only 5 months old!). It also took my older one almost three weeks to even begin to play with the pup, and now they play all the time and even sleep cuddled up. He wouldn't let her within 3 feet of him when he was sleeping for at least the first month. I keep interactions supervised and when my older one sounds irritated/overwhelmed with her puppy energy, I separate them. Usually give them each something to chew, refocus their energy on that instead of each other.
My older dog did not like my new puppy at all. She disrupted his routine, got cuddles which he thought was for him, and bit him! Horrors. He didn't like it at all. But he's a total gent with puppies, and didn't tell her off. I really wished he would have - a bit at least. Now she is older, at 6 months, and a couple of days ago she was bugging and bugging and bugging him, wanting to play, and getting more and more robust in jumping on him. In the end, he turned round and barked at her, and growled. She backed off, and they are now getting along much better! So long as the older dog is reasonable and proportionate, there is nothing wrong with a puppy getting (appropriately) told off.
