hi there I brought home a female Rottie (10 weeks old now)about a month ago and I have a Male GSD that's almost 6 now I've been keeping them separate since I brought her home accept for about 90mins spread out throughout the day. My GSD just runs as soon as she initiates play, he lets her have his toys(if I leave them out), or his food which is wonderful accept he doesn't like being closer than 9 feet from her. Which isn't a problem I guess accept for the fact that she ALWAYS wants to play with him. I've been maintaining his regular routine now that I have her sleeping when it's his time and he sleeps, or hangs out in his den when it's her time. So I guess the basis of my question is how do I go about teaching her my GSD is not a toy or playmate? Also anything else I could be doing to help him see she's part of our family pack now and to not be so serious.

Welcome to the forum! You have come to the right place and I know you will get lots of great advice and support.

I don't think you can possibly teach a 10 week old pup that another dog is not a play thing - if it was removed from it's mom and the litter mates at six weeks old, it is only natural that it wants to play and bond with the dog. You will find lots of information on this site which will support the idea of not even allowing it to be around the older dog at all at this point. And in my opinion, letting the puppy anywhere near the older dog's food with the other dog in the room could be a big mistake... (they shouldn't be eating the same food at this point so why allow this? It could eventually really tick off your older guy, or it could set the puppy up to being dominate over the GSD).

At 10 weeks old you are not going to be teaching much of anything; this is a time you should be bonding with the pup and establishing yourself as the pack leader. You will have plenty of time to let the dogs bond much later; doing so at this point is going to make it far more difficult to train the puppy, and it sounds like your GSD is TRYING to tell you he doesn't want the puppy's attention... LISTEN to him while he is still being polite about it.

There are numerous free ebooks on the Leerburg site on what to do with puppies and what NOT to do with them as well. The DVD "Your Puppy from 8 weeks to 8 months" is a good place to start, but again, there is tons of free info.

I know you will be getting a lot more advice from folks far more seasoned than am I, so hang in there. Again, welcome to the forum.

By the way, do you have a crate for the puppy?

thanks for the quick reply, yes she does have a crate and I have purchased your puppy 8 weeks to 8 months and watched it several times, in fact she's doing wonderful with basic reward based training like sit stay down and come. Which is really blowing my mind and I guess that's why the last thing I want her to learn until she's 6 months is ignore Bronx. lol. But what you said really does make sense and I guess I'm expecting too much at this point thanks for putting me in perspective.

It's honestly not reasonable to expect the pup to control herself. We made that mistake for the first few days we had our new pup. I thought it was up to the older dog to assert his pack position. Negative, that was my job. You really do just have to keep them completely separated for a while and make sure you always put the older dog first, if you aren't doing that already.