Dominance

Fran27

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#1
I'm sure it's just a sign of dominance, but making sure. Boris is always grabbing Tips by the neck (shoulders I guess), usually strong enough to make Tips yelp a bit. Is it common between dogs to show their dominance? Usually afterwards Tips start nipping at him etc.. Does it mean he's not accepting it?

This morning Boris kept Tips on his back and started sniffing his belly, and Boris didn't move, but after that he was on Boris' head chewing his ear.

Should I be worried of fights because Tips won't accept Boris' dominance?
 
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#2
Boris is teaching Tips a whole lot of stuff that he will need to know when he grows up, Fran. Watch how they are playing . . . you'll see Boris show Tips how to bring down prey, how to catch and hold prey, how to fight, how to defend himself in a fight (not that your dogs are ever going to have to really do any of that - it's just the way they are wired). It's more of a dog-to-pup series of lessons than having to do with dominance.

It was fascinating watching our dogs go through that successively - first Bimmer and Buffy, then Bimmer and Shiva, then Bimmer and Kharma and Shiva and Kharma.
 

Fran27

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#3
Oh nice, I never thought about it this way... It's just scary sometimes because he seems to go too far and Tips is coughing afterwards :(
 
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#4
This is what we generally do since we now have a 11 week old puppy who wants to play with our 1 year old. Once the 2 of them get going with their playing and it starts to get rough the little one will generally start to run for one of us, if that happens and the older one doesn't leave him alone when we say "stop" we will intervene by either picking up the little one or squirting the older one so she figures out when we say "stop" we mean "stop"...
 
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#5
Every now and then I'll intervene, but I haven't had to as much as some people who have dogs of breeds with a significant size differential. Sometimes they just don't know their own strenght! All the intervention that's ever been necessary here is to tell them to take it easy or chill out, and even then, the pup will usually wait a few heartbeats, then dive right back in and ask for more, lol!
 

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