Am I Being Over-Protective?

What would be the best way to tell someone that having a dog intentionally hurt another dog is not funny.

Yesterday as I pulled in the driveway after work, I get out of the car and my other half has Lincoln and Dallas outside. We're talking saying hello and I see Lincoln run full tilt to Dallas and body checks his rear end and takes out both of his rear legs. Poor boy fell hard with a loud thud. Dallas is a big boy and when he falls; he falls real hard. OH lets out a small chuckle, and I ask him what's so funny. After I gave him the look of death he calls Lincoln off of Dallas. I don't see what's so funny about the whole scenario.

I just don't like to see any dogs get hurt during play time. I don't let any of my boys go over board when it's play time. I let them wrestle and play bitey face all they want, but when they get over-excited I get them to bring it down a notch or two.

Am I being over-protective?

Given the problems Danes so often have with their hips and spines, absolutely not!

Have you tried hip checking the OH when he's not expecting it?

If you didn't have a giant dog who's rather fragile/prone to injury I would say you might be a little over-protective. But because Dallas is such a large beast, I don't think you're in the wrong here.

I chuckle when my dogs have wipe-outs while playing. Sometimes I'll call them over and check them over after a really hard fall, but usually they're just as tickled about it as I am.

I let my dogs throw each other around - I've become far less of a worry wart in the last few years, but there are still times when I will interrupt dogs and ask them to calm down a bit if they're getting too worked up inside.

meh, I laugh at myself and at my friends after a particularly ungraceful wipeout once I know that no parties are seriously injured (tripping up the stairs, anyone? ) Sometimes it's more of an awkward/nervous laugh than anything and is all but involuntary. I definitely understand your protectiveness, but from your explanation, I don't think a few chuckles is out of line at all. If the dog hadn't gotten up or had started limping seriously, I'm sure the other person would've been just as concerned. After all, laughing at something like that doesn't mean you wanted it to happen or will try to get it to happen again.

I understand where you guys are coming from. I laugh when I trip up stars too or if a friend does, but when dogs are playing and one deliberatly flattens the others, that sort of behaviour and play style doesn't sit well with me.
I laugh all the time when the boys play and flop around like fishes out of water but they are not hurting eachother.

Maybe I should learn to relax a little more

I don't think it's funny when my little fellas hit each other either.

Rain got leveled by Bodie and fell like a ping pong ball down the stairs earlier this year. Total cost to me $700.

I don' think you are because he's so big and more fragile.

We used to have to watch Harry (28kg cattle dogX) with Sophie (40kg bull arab type) because although he adored her, he had no forethought and wasn't careful with her eventhough she was like 9 years older than him. I remember one time I called Harry to me, he ran under Sophie, caught her on his back and just kept running with this poor old dottery dog side stepping as fast as she could to keep up.

was he actually hurt? I mean if he was hurt and OH laughed then yeah I'd be upset but if it's just that he laughed after the dog COULD have been injuured but wasn't... I'd probably have to stiffle a laugh too if I knew said dog was OK.

I guess I wouldnt view it as intentional anymore than I would assume a toddler running full tilt into another and knocking them down as intentional. If one dog has issues, bad hips, surgery, etc I would work on it for sure but otherwise, no, I wouldnt worry and would most likely laugh

Dogs do body check each other in play. A friend's dog does hip checks to mine in play (these are 40-50 pound dogs and it's not dangerous).

I don't think there's anything wrong with monitoring play and stepping in if you think a dog is being inappropriate.

I would probably your DH a bit of slack, though, after explaining why you didn't find it funny. OTOH, I laughed at my dog when he wiped out on a boardwalk and didn't realize he'd scraped himself up, so maybe I'm not the best judge!

Personally, I'd find it amusing as long as no one was hurt, but having said that... Who cares if you're being overprotective? It's not a crime. If it bothers you, it bothers you. It's not like the dogs will wither away and die of some kind of horrible play deficiency if you don't let them play exactly that way with each other.

oh of course the slamming into was intentional...I meant it wasnt intentional to make them fall and possibly hurt them. Maybe intentional isnt the correct word...I meant they have no idea of the possible outcomes

I think I just don't like the excessive play style of making the other dogs fall real hard. That's just me.
Don't get me wrong, the dogs play real hard sometimes and flop around and wrestle falling to the ground, but to take out another dog in the sense of full contact football doesn't sit well with me.
Maybe i'm humanizing them too much as if they are my children

When my boys used to play, they would play HARD. I would limit their play if it got out of hand but I would laugh at them the same. No sense in getting upset if nobody was hurt.

This is my younger two's idea of a good time. I also have videos somewhere or them slamming in to each other - hard. Its how they play. Do they get hurt sometimes? Yep. But they're both healthy in general, no joint issues or anything, so unless someone IS hurt or recovering from an injury, I leave them alone. If the human is always stepping in, some dogs never learn their limits and never learn how to keep themselves in check - to self monitor. I will step in with a puppy or a new dog, but for these two who live together, I can't be playing referee 24/7, nor do I think it is in their best interest.

Danes are big dogs, but they're no more "delicate" than any other dog. These are dogs who originally were agile and strong enough to hunt boar. I think they can handle a fellow dog pummeling here and there. JMO though

YIKES that's huge! sorry about that!

I wish all Danes were as sound as yours, Danefied I've seen way too many fragile ones in the last several years, and dogs that just don't look put together quite right. It's heartbreaking; they're such a lovely breed.

Wait You have a saluki!?! Where are the pics? :nono:

Like I posted before, I don't always intervene and I do let them play hard but not to the point where they are falling like an over-sized sack of potatoes. I think you may be thinking they are not allowed to play hard at all which is a misconception.

Nice picture My boys play like that too, lol.

Oh, very true that some dogs are not put together right and the bigger they are the more it affects them to have poor conformation.

However, IMO, much like temperament, physical soundness is a compilation of nature AND nurture. You can compensate a lot for a dog being put together weird in many ways. For example, Breez has much worse conformation growing up than she does now. Her roached back we were able to correct significantly with diet and specific stretching and back strengthening exercises.

Diet is a biggie - a good quality diet and keeping the dog on the slim side. You see so many really obese danes because people somehow think that just because the dog is a giant breed, they HAVE to weigh 200 pounds, never mind that the vast majority of danes are structurally not built to weigh that much.
Take a good 20 pounds off of most danes out there and I bet you'd see a huge improvement in their joint issues.

The other biggie is making sure the dog gets out and moves. This is the more controversial one... The dog in my avatar is full of buckshot, his right front leg was also shot and left to heal on its own, so it is deformed and wonky. Lunar could very easily spend 23 hours a day on the sofa, but we make him get up, go out and romp and play. Sometimes he over-does it and is sore, others might argue with me that he needs to be on a leash and not allowed to run to the point of getting sore, but to me the benefit of regular exercise and seeing how far he can push it, is worth a few days of arnica and DGP.

Now of course none of this means I think dogs should be allowed to play to where they hurt each other, just saying that I think sometimes we tend to be overly cautious and that can be counter-productive.

This is a mild example of rough play - bear in mind that Breez is not even a year old in this video and is now easily twice the size of Bates. They still play just like this (an yup, we're laughing )
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlP44WRuz0s