Play fighting with your dog...

[wheresmymojo]

Do you play fight with your dog?

We play fight with ours quite a lot...just being silly with her really. She absolutely loves it and sometimes will play bow and bark until one of us gives in and 'fights' with her.

She's quite bitey during these sessions but never breaks the skin. However she does occasionally get over excited and snaps at your face and on occasion has bitten my nose which has hurt (again, no skin broken and I don't blame her, it's just natural play behaviour however we have put boundaries in place around snapping towards faces and stop playing with her immediately if she does this so this has reduced).

I guess I just wondered what other dog owners do? Do you rough play with your dogs?

Shes quite a large(ish) German shepherd x Doberman x something else (maybe something hound-ish) mixed breed rescue.

I can imagine some people might think were mad to play fight with her.

Important to note that we don't have any children or children who visit us at home and I watch her like a hawk around other people because if she decided to play fight with them they might think she's aggressive.

On your bed? And only when she initiates it? Bad plan.

We would occasionally play tug with rookiedog, but that's the limit.
He's an extremely placid, easy going poodle/retriever cross and we'd like to keep it that way.

I was very perplexed on recent family holiday that BIL thought it was a good idea to whip rookiedog up into a frenzied state by tugging and throwing with a ball in the living room, particularly as his toddler DGD was in the same room at the time. Of course if rookiedog had got overexcited the dog would have totally been blamed. I told him to stop straight away.

In your case, I'd stop the play fighting for a bit. It's a large breed and whilst you might be completely relaxed with what's happening, a friend who visits may not.

Ive also got a spaniel and we never play fight. He would be confused and not enjoy it at all. Even if my two boys start rough housing the dog gets antsy and barks to tell them to stop.

I would work on phasing it out or pivot into playing tug or chase with STOP being used every minute or so.

We play fight with ours quite a lot...just being silly with her really. She absolutely loves it and sometimes will play bow and bark until one of us gives in and 'fights' with her.

There’s an element of challenge and dominance play going on there though - it’s not just a game. It is in part of course, but either way I don’t think you’re winning…
I think you can definitely ‘play fight’ with a dog, but it depends on your dog’s temperament, your secure control over them and your own understanding of the ‘rules’. I’m not sure you understand the rules fully. You and your dog are not on the same wave length. You sound quite dismissive and flippant about the risks and the dynamics of this game and so I don’t think you should be doing it. She sees you as an equal opponent - it sounds like you do to! But within this game you need to be in charge. If you were she wouldn’t be cheeky enough to try and bite you, even playfully. I think that’s very risky.

Not beyond Tuggy with a toy or rope, no. And we use that to train the Leave command so it’s controlled and a learning experience not a show of strength.She play fights with her sister and dogs she knows well who are of a similar size and temperament, but we’re not dogs so I don’t allow her to play fight with humans. I still have a small scar on my nose from our last dog getting giddy and jumping up with her mouth open so I’m extra careful with our latest dog.

My sprocker spaniel loves tug of war with a rope and he growls as he is tugging it and as soon as I let the rope go, he knows it's over and goes back to playing with himself (chucking it in the air and being the crazy spaniel that he is).

Even as a puppy he never bit as it was a firm "no" and he's never put his mouth around anyone playfully. I wouldn't allow it and now I trust him (fully supervised) to play with children. He's very patient and will wait until they chuck a toy or ball in the air for him and he stands well back/doesn't jump up etc. I think you need to set some boundaries as even an over excited bite, not an aggressive one, can do some damage.

We play with our dog but first bit of bite is the end of the game ! I wouldn't encourage this to be honest and I'm surprised you even are asking

I’d recommend some tug e nuff toys and changing the dynamics slightly. You’re putting your dog in a situation where it could do something bad by accident, not worth it in my opinion

I do sometimes do some playfighting with DDog. This involves him placing his mouth on / around my hands but he has excellent bite inhibition (i.e. he doesn't apply significant pressure). On the odd occasion he has squeezed a bit hard the game ends. I see this as equivalent to the 'bitey face' game that dogs play with each other.

I should also add that he has no interest whatsoever in playing with strangers, so he's not going to do that to them, and nor do we have children / visiting children.

He did go through an unappealing phase where, having worked out that he wasn't allowed to lick our faces, he tried to be sneaky about getting a lick in here and there. Obviously, opening his mouth streamlined the process. Next thing we knew there were open jaws coming straight towards our faces (there's something primevally terrifying about that) with solely affectionate intentions - and the odd accidental nose nibble. That wasn't play though, that was him attempting to problem solve!

I wouldn't, however, do it with your dog given the history.

No, I don't other than playing tug with a toy. I wouldn't want my dogs to play bite with people at all, IMO it's better if they know that teeth to skin contact is never allowed.

I very much agree with PPs that in your situation it's not something to encourage. I definitely wouldn't allow the dog to choose when to engage in this sort of play. I'd also keep him off the bed. A large powerful dog with a difficult start in life who has issues with resource guarding and snapping, who has managed to nip your face more than once? That really sounds like an accident waiting to happen.

No we don't. He likes a bit of tug of war but I'd never encourage him to play fight with me. He's not that way inclined either.

Definitely do. I was a bit gutted when my middle lab became too sensible, now we’ve got a four month old puppy it’s back on!

Given your dogs history I think you are taking a risk there and also not being fair to your dog. It’s probably safe but why risk it when there are lots of other ways to interact with him?
We play with our dog but he never puts his teeth on our skin, in fact if you do put your hand in his mouth he moves away. If he did, we would stop

My husband does a play fight kind of thing with our dog. It's not proper play fighting though, it's mostly rolling around on the bed pulling each other towards them. Like a cross between tug of war and wrestling. She knows it is only to be done with him, we've trained her the 'ask' a certain way and it's only to be played in our room. If she ever got snappy when she was younger it stopped and she was taken out the room.

I don't love it, but as long as they both enforce the rules properly I let them get on with it.

Sometimes on the bed, we play where is the hand?, mostly my husbands thing and the dog rolls around trying to get his hand. I find it very similar to the way you would play with a cat. He is not a particularly playing dog but he enjoys that and sometimes a bit of tug. He never bites but will growl play growl when we do tug, that's just his terrier expression though, nothing sinister

Never play fought with my springer...would never cross my mind to...i would be wary about setting a dog up fof trouble if they thought humans will play like that....

Do a bit of tug with a tug enuff toy and stolen socks! But thats about it in terms of physical play...
But dog doesn't play like this with other dogs either...maybe it's a breed thing

All of this! Rough playing with your dog is your decision. Not something I would do, certainly not playing that involved teeth or snapping, because you’re blurring the lines between acceptable behaviour and unacceptable behaviour and presumably you will expect your dog to know the boundaries eg in different locations, with different people etc, and that’s a big ask for any dog. So if you’re going to do it then don’t focus only a Stop command, you need a Start command too. Or else she might start it up with someone else and someone else might get hurt if they don’t know the Stop. Yes I know you said you watch her, but by the time you can do anything about it it might too late. Which will have serious consequences for both dog and whoever is on the end of it.

Yeah and we initiate, he loves it. He’d play with other dogs the same way.
but teeth are only allowed to brush skin gently, he’s never allowed to bite, even gently. Normally he grabs blankets and toys if he wants to bite something whilst we play
and definitely no teeth allowed near human faces.

Omg why do they do that 🤣🤣 our lurcher literally sounds like the hounds of baskervilles growling and howling at us when we play fight, absolute big idiot that she is 🙈

Our ils do but they have giant breeds, as with others, I don’t think smaller breeds would appreciate it. Saying that we used to have a big breed and I wasn’t a fan, everyone staying about stop signs- it just reminds me of when eg people are having eg water fights with their kids and it’s all go and then suddenly the person says’we’re done, that’s the end of it’. It’s confusing and I think a bit unfair l. It’s like ‘go, go, go’ now ‘stop. I mean it, this second, and we’re done!!’

But dogs aren't children - you can't say to them "in three five minutes, playtime is over" or "if you keep doing that, I'll take the game away and nobody will play it". Children also won't (generally 😉) bite and attack you when they're hyper.

If a dog becomes over aroused or silly when playing then you've already gone too far IMO. Having a clear "stop - game over" command is vital to stop people getting badly hurt.

This except you are play fighting on your bed when the dog is challenging you. This can only end in tears.

I thought the consensus was not to play fight using hands. There should always be a toy between their teeth and your hands. If they accidentally touch/bite your hands, you have to make a noise and stop the game immediately.

I'm not sure there is consensus. What there is two strains of thought:

1. Bite prohibition: as you describe, that's where any contact of teeth on skin is now allowed and stops play. Pros = no one gets hurt, even accidentally; no vaguery for the dog to get confused. Cons = dog may not know how much pressure is required to hurt a person so if they ever snap in warning, they may accidentally use too much pressure
2. Bite inhibition: teeth on skin is allowed so long is it is gentle. Pros = dog has clear data on how much pressure is too much for human skin. Cons = doesn't provide that clear cut line on what is allowed and what is not.

Which way you fall will depend on your own views and experience and the dog you have in front of it.

e.g. someone with a terrier may go for bite prohibition because terriers often have harder bites, even in play and so may be less able to regulate bite pressure to the same degree. Also if a terrier is using their mouth they are often killing something or pretending to . Someone with a lab may go for bite inhibition because they have naturally softer mouths and so may regulate more easily. Plus, labs are bred for retrievel so prone to gently having things in the mouths anyway and may be happy just gently mouthing as part of play. (Breeds are just guides and there will still be individual variety within those descriptions).

Who you have in the home probably also plays a part. e.g. small children and mouthing - even gently - is likely to result in trouble sooner or later.

As an aside, the stop command is a useful one for all kinds of activities and play is a nice place to introduce it. Just don't have it always stop play totally. Use it to pause for a few seconds before then re-initiating play. That way it keeps potency because it doesn't often result in something the dog doesn't want (e.g. end of play). I've used it in play for all kinds of reasons and for us it means 'freeze where you are' until I say otherwise. It meant it was there as an option when the dog lept into a tangle of barbed wire hidden under some foliage. I told him to stop, he froze, I cleared a path and guided him back out again. Play is where the best learning happens

Bite prohibition: as you describe, that's where any contact of teeth on skin is not allowed and stops play.