My one year old Lab wont let my two year old Lab have fun!

I have 2 year old and 1 year old male yellow Labradors. The 2 year old is muscular 85 pounds, well behaved, obedient and very athletic. The 1 year old is smaller about 50 pounds muscular, very athletic. When they wrestle and playfight, the older Lab is clearly dominant. The younger Lab is relentless and is always the instigator. The younger seems to continually demand attention from the older.

Here is the problem. We cannot play fetch with both at the same time because the younger will fetch his own toy and then he always take the toy away that the older one is fetching. And, the older one allows it. Its like the younger doesn't want the older one to have any fun unless its with him. This behavior is consistent with all their toys, bones etc; except food. If the older is fetching, the younger will chase him and bite him in his side until the older is distracted. Whatever the older Lab has , the younger one takes away from him; except food.

should I keep a training collar on the younger one until the behavior stops? Or, is there another method?

 

Both were neutered at 1 year.

 

Hi Coachnorris, welcome to the forum

I don't think your younger boy is thinking in terms of controlling how your older boy has fun, it's just that whenever he sees fun being had, he wants to be part of it (or in other words, he's only thinking of himself!)

The way to manage the situation is by exercising and playing with them separately, so that your older boy gets a chance to play undisturbed, and your younger boy becomes more focussed on you than on his big brother.

Also, I'm not sure what you mean by a training collar, but please note we firmly believe that punishment, including electronic shock collars, has no place in modern dog training - you can read more about why here, and here. And we will take down posts which promote them. You can read more about our forum rules here.

Best wishes,

Sarah

 

Thanks Sarah for your thoughtful reply. I'm certain you are correct and separate training is what we are doing now. By training collar, I do not mean "Shock" collar and I concur there is no place for shock collars. In the past, on hunting dogs, I have used a collar that emits an audible sound serving only to redirect their captured attention back to me when they are a significant distance away.