Question submitted by the audience in our recent webinar: "The Importance of Exercising Your Dog's Brain for Optimal Physical and Mental Health":
How can dog owners best modulate play behavior that becomes overt aggression between multiple dogs in the same household?
Answer by: Karen Overall, MA, VMD, PhD, DACVB
Play can have loud and physically rough components. By ‘overt aggression’ I am assuming – and this makes me uncomfortable because I always insist on a video to ensure we are talking about the same thing – that the activity is no longer play and now involves a threat, contest or challenge. If the latter, injury can result.
There is no quick fix for this. There are dogs who cannot read dog signaling well or who may not be able to control their own behavior once they become aroused. For these dogs, always having a lead available and keeping them on a harness may help because if you watch the reaction level and the changing responses of the other dogs, you can take the offender away and reward her for becoming calm. She doesn’t get to go back to the other dogs until she is calm and can be redirected to a non-canine focus (eg, a Frisbee, a ball, a toy). Wearing these dogs out physically can help. If they will chase and return balls, they may play better with others once panting. If they can carry a ball or a toy in their mouths, they cannot carry another dog. But … the key is to watch the arousal level and level of reactivity (they are different) and keep the dog below the levels at which the problem occurs … and reward them for not reacting. The welfare of the dog who is harassed also needs to be a key concern … sometimes dogs don’t need to play with each other.
