When you play with your puppy and adult dog, you can easily play too rough and in time you will produce a very dominating or an aggressive dog. Problems like food guarding, biting, nipping, and many other problems can be a result when you play with your dog or pup too roughly. Children need to learn not to play rough, pulling on body parts of the dog, or hitting the dog. There is a child conditioning method which will help to condition the dog to minor child behavior such as poking and screaming around the dog. (Click here for the child condition method.) If you play too rough with a submissive dog, the dog may become fearful of you. (Click here for more about fearful dogs.) If you have a pup or dog which is nipping or biting click here. (I'm still working on the fearful and nipping or biting pages.)

Many trainers disapprove of playing Tug-of-war. I do not. As long as Tug-of-war is played with safety measures it is a good game to play with your dog and puppy. These safety measure are to teach the dog or pup to release it's toy with a selected release command. The dog must remain off the toy until given a command to go after the toy again and then again to be able to command the dog to release it's toy. You can then let the dog have the toy sometimes. But if you let the dog have the toy all the time he or she will think they have control over you, since you gave in and stopped the fight by letting him or her have it. Don't pull the toy out of a dog's mouth because this teaches the dog to fight with you, when you want him to simply open his mouth so you can have the toy. Below I explain several ways that you can get your dog or pup to open its mouth, to allow you to have the toy. The different commands you can use for commanding a dog to release are "Let go!", "Give!", "Out!" or in German "Aus!". The out and aus are used the most in protection dog training, if you wish to have your dog trained to become a protection dog. However, the other commands are fine to use too. It may be wise to check your local or nearest Schutzhund and National Personal Protection Dog Trials to find out the commands they accept in their trials, if you feel you may be interested in competing with your dog. Below I give a link to another page in my site where I discuss the different protection dogs. You do need to be careful with a pup due to teething. Try not to pull very hard, as you may pull out some of your pup's teeth when they're not exactly ready to come out.

The game of tug-of-war can cause a dog to become aggressive. When you do not teach the dog a release command and just allowing the dog to have the tug-of-war item all the time this may cause a dog to see him or herself as the top dog. When this happens most dogs do build up confidence. The more this is done the more confidence builds up in the dog which after some time can cause a dog to develop into a dog trying to take charge of you and your home.

Doing the tug-of-war to a fearful and unconfident dog is very good to do. Adding a release command just tells the dog you are the boss and won't have any effect on building up your dog's confidence. For these dogs you can allow them to take the item more, as long as you add a few times where you have your dog release it by command.

I see may people who pull an item away from the dog to take away from the dog while the dog is still holding onto it (when you're not trying to play tug-of-war) by it's mouth or paws. This causes the dog to fight with you like when you are playing tug-of-war. This action will also cause the dog to become possessive and then later become dominating toward you. This can then lead to aggression problems. The same is true when you are playing fetch and the dog won't give up the item and then you pull the item out of the dog's mouth. The pulling action causes the dog to clamp down even more which produces tension and then the tension produces aggression or dominating behaviors. High confidence is edging right into domination. Fearful and unconfident dogs have low to moderate confidence. With a fearful and unconfident dog you probably don't have any aggression or dominating problems now but after a year or more the of playing tug-of-war without the release command included. You'll eventually develop your dog into a high confidence dog. This is where you'll need to add more domination or control on your part to keep the dog thinking that you're the top dog or you'll have a passive dog turn into a possessive dog. Tug-of-war is used in training a pup and adult dog to become confident for the training in Schutzhund and Protection dog training. To find out more about this subject, click on Schutzhund and Protection dog.
 
 

Once you have chosen one command to use, you can begin the training. The method I use the most is to place your fingers on your dog's lips and squeeze his lips against his teeth. This will cause him or her to drop the toy. As you do this, you say the command you had chosen to cue your dog to open its mouth. After you do this method four or five times your dog may release toy on command. However, if your dog bites or nips, you may want to choose another method because your dog may drop the item and then bite or nip your hand.

Another method is offering your dog a dog biscuit or a different dog toy to cause the dog to open it's mouth and drop the item in his or her mouth.
 
 

Encouraging your dog to growl by attempting to take it's bone or another toy, will tell your dog to do this when you try to pick up it's food dish with food still in it, in order to place more food in it's dish and the dog could bite you. If a child is playing near the dog while it's eating or chewing a toy and then the child gets very close to the dog, this could become very dangerous for the child. If the dog gets something that you don't want him or her to have and try to take it away, the dog will growl at you. Just like when you would try to take it's item away when you are playing. Eventhough you are serious this time the dog doesn't know the difference between the two situations. A growling dog is more dangerous than a barking one because growling means the dog is unsure of a situation, which causes a dog to become even more fearful of the situation. This will cause an unpredictable reaction to happen in this situation.
 
 

If your dog plays with other dogs which are roughly playing with him or her. This may cause your dog to also become rough, from learning it through playing with the other dog. A rough playing dog can produce aggression in your dog. If you feel there is a dog (or dogs) which is a bad influence on your dog then keep them away from each other because the bad behavior which the other dog has caused your dog to display, will only become worse the more the two are together. What the dog has learned from this dog may also be displayed toward you and really hinder your relationship with your dog.
 
 

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