Hey everyone,

I have a questiong regarding dominant behavior in dogs. First off, what types of behaviors does everyone consider dominating and NOT allow when dogs are playing?

I'm having trouble with the dog of a friend of mine. The dog, Nos, IMO is very dominant. Nos always trys to mount my dog (Jasmine) and my roommates puppy (Koal) when they are playing, Nos's bark becomes very aggressive and he is always putting his entire mouth around Jasmine's head, and biting at the skin on her neck shoulders and cheeks. All of these behaviors I try and stop but Nos doesn't listen very well (not Ob trained, only really listens to my friend when he has his E-Collar on).

With the puppy, Nos always tries to 'intercept' Koal and Jasmine playing and stand in front when they are chasing each other back and forth. The other thing Nos will do with the puppy is run up to him and place his head/neck over the top of the Koal's neck/shoulders. Nos also occaisionally tries to mount Koal.

The other issue is if they are all together the puppy, Koal, will begin to try and mount Jasmine also, which I also STOP immediately.

I'm at the point where I don't want my dog 'playing' with their dogs because they just allow them to do whatever they want. I think that they think it's amusing that there dogs hump mine and each other <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" />

Comments? Advice? Thanks in advance.

As much as it may upset the humans, the dogs are simply displaying dog pack behaviors.
(If they could vocalize human behaviors they would probably wonder why we pass up on sniffing really fine roadkill, touch hands instead of smelling butts, and go thirsty instead of drinking out of a nearby pond!) Different strokes for different species.

Now if any of the dogs were to attempt to hump a human...then I'd say some re-ranking is in order.

It doesn't sound like you have any nasty, draw-blood fights occuring (yet), but if these pack behaviors are unacceptable then the easiest way to handle this is not to allow the dogs to "play" with each other.

PS: you don't say how old this puppy is...but imho, it's not a good idea to have a young puppy interacting with adult dogs without close supervision. Again, pack behavior takes over and 1) the pup is overwhelmed, 2) is taught behaviors you may not like.

The puppy is ~5months. But he is supervised when they are playing. Thanks for the response