How do you stop bad dog behaviour of ROUGH play ?
Does your dog go hell for leather in its play – have not turn off button and play so hard other dogs either want to kill it or at least they yelp and run away in fear?
This is where I tell you about my direct and very real experience of walking a black hell beast we will call ralf.. This dog was walked by its owners, who also had difficulty turning its play instinct button off. They would go very early or late to dog parks or go to places where there were no dogs.
Going to these kinds of places and avoiding socialization is a very temporary fix.
I was give the task of walking said hell beast (Labrador cross) and it walked like a might salmon pulling every which way in the park. It didn’t matter how long I walked it would pull until its neck would nearly drop of from collar tightness.
WHY ROUGH PLAY IN A DOG?
This dog was attracted to raw energy. Didn’t matter if the other dog was showing aggression or fear, it wanted to run at it and make a play.
Didn’t matter much the response it got except after a few years I noticed it didn’t run hard at power breeds that were obviously going to give more than a simple hello back.
This dog was relatively rare in how it wanted to play, particularly since it was an adult.
Bull Stafford shire terriers often get a bad name for rough play and biting in the park. Again for the staffy they do it mostly for fun and an escalating level of endorphin’s feeding its primitive brain. They ram things and think its fun, because they don’t get hurt – so they have to learn what is acceptable.
HOW TO FIX ROUGH PLAY IN DOGS
No silver bullet.
If your dog is off lead and has good recall, you need to get it to a point with dog training to come to you, get a treat and reset its mood. To switch it off from over the top play to dutiful servant who is listening to you.
Just as dogs hate it to be isolated from you in the home (except for very strong instinct hunting dogs) the average dog in the dog park hates being put on lead. Sometimes its the only way to subdue them, give them a time out. You should ideally walk away from the offended dog (and owner), give your dog a reasoned, not loud scalding, and pack walk with them on lead, getting them used to bonding an wanting to walk with you as much as play hard.
My preferred method with non red zone dogs is to have them with muzzle on (if they play bite too hard) and on lead. until they have earned off lead running, and they will often still have muzzle on.
What this does is if they decide to go crazy with the play, they cant get any purchase on the other dogs body and this frustration eventually has them realize that they can’t do anything with the muzzle on so they give up. Amazingly often when the muzzle comes off they just have relief, they don’t usually ramp up to aggressive play again – but this is dependent on how long you have walked them with the muzzle on, so the imaginary muzzle still stays in their dogs mind long after it is taken off.
They will earn having the muzzle off and being off lead, but if they break the rules, the muzzle and or lead go back on. DOGS are mostly smarter than we think and push us to get what they want, unless we have boundaries.