How do you play with your dog/s?

[APBTLove]

I was just wondering how everyone here handles the physical play with their dogs. I know people who believe you shouldn't play using your body/hands etc. as in wrestling with the dog, only inanimate objects.

It also depends greatly on what your dog likes, obviously.

[qbchottu]

My dogs play rough and I'm pretty physical with them also. We wrestle and bump into each other. They play bite my forearms and hands (nothing painful). I taught them bite inhibition with human flesh when they were young so we don't have any issues with that. When I play bow to them, that's their sign that they can act rowdy and play rough with me. They aren't allowed to do it in any other context. But they can jump on me, wrestle, knock me over, bite, chase etc etc when play is initiated. Once I say "Ok, that's all" and clap, then they stop and they know to go back to normal manners. I know lots of people warn against that sort of play, but I've found it really helps because I get a lot more focus from them during obedience and bite training. Our bond has gotten stronger with regular physical play as well.

[GSKnight]

I play rough and wrestle with Viktor sometimes. I did not do this at first, only having him 2 months now, but as we have gotten used to each other, it seems fine (and fun). The other night, he got a little out of hand, so I had to settle him down, but he seems to have gotten it.

[Good_Karma]

I'm not really comfortable with using my hands/arms to play with my dogs. I generally use a tug toy if I want to play like that. Mostly we throw balls or sticks for them.

[Lilie]

I think it totally depends on the dog. If I had a dog that had a hard, rough play drive, I certainly wouldn't stick my hands in his/her mouth. I can say that Hondo doesn't like to have my body parts shoved in his mouth. He likes squeaky toys.

The roughest he gets is attacking my horse head slippers while they are still on my feet.

Hubby is more physical with Hondo. But if it starts getting rough, Hondo will stop and bring back a toy.

[NewbieShepherdGirl]

I wrestle Sasha a lot. She doesn't understand playing with toys (though now will occasionally play tug with me). We get pretty physical, her biting (more like mouthing) my hands, arms, and legs. It's funny because I never had to teach her not to bite too hard, in fact when she thinks she's bitten to hard (she's never bitten harder than I'm comfortable with, but harder than she's comfortable with) she'll stop instantly and kiss the area and then won't play anymore for a while

We also play chase when we're at my mom's (not enough room in the apartment for that stuff and I can't take her off leash here either). She LOVES that game. It's really funny to do in my mom's house because she'll run behind the couch and then I can run to either side fast enough not to give her a way to escape and she starts getting a bit mouthy lol! I can just see her little thought bubble, "Mom you're not playing the game right!!! I'm supposed to zoom all around the living room and you're supposed to try and catch me not trap me behind the couch!" Every once in a while my mom will get in on this game and she'll have to out smart both of us. That gets fun.

As far as the biting goes, I only let her do it because she won't play with other people that way. She will sort of rough house with my mom and brother but she way gentler with my mom, never mouths her, and with my brother she only does it to get him to chase her (he's faster than Mom and Grammy and thus more fun to play with). She will let certain other people chase her, but will not wrestle or even really play tug with anyone else. With other people she just lets them have the tug; with me she'll drag me across the living room. She's also good about if I say we're done then we're done. I sometimes get a dramatic groan because she wanted to keep going but she doesn't push it.

[APBTLove]

Thanks for moving this mods, I really didn't mean to post in stories- brain fart!

[APBTLove]

For me it depends on the dog. Jaeger and I wrestle very rough, he loves it, I throw him around and flip him over, sit on him and shove him and he gets that big crazy smile on his face and beats me up. He knows when I say "Stop." or "Okay, we're done." play is over and he has to act like a sane dog again.

My little Pom mix plays very rough with me too, well, she's rough, I just push her around and she bites and growls and acts crazy and runs around 100mph and then swoops in for another attack.

My old GSD, Dutch, never liked to wrestle, once in a while she'd bat you with her paws and lightly mouth your hands but she was SUCH a softie, she took it very personally if you pushed her. She only really like playing fetch and being loved on.

The one dog I stopped playing rough with was Roxy, my foster APBT mix. She was a firecracker who was never taught manners and had unusually sharp teeth. Once she got riled up playing she'd ram you in the face and totally ignore commands. I had to pick her up as she was zooming past the last time this happened and tell her to knock it off. That's a dog I stuck to toys with. She had no sense of what was too rough due to how she was raised.

[sashadog]

My bf used to wrestle with Sasha because thats the kind of dog he wanted to begin with. He grew up with two brothers and big dopey goldens and all they did was wrestle. I was never supportive of it simply because she is pretty rough and my other dogs are not tolerant of rough housing... gotta love those cattle dogs
I finally got him knock it off when Sasha started mouthing anybody she met. We would walk past some kids in the park and they would stick out their hand to pet her and she would mouth their arm. We would correct it right away of course but it wasn't worth the risk for us. The wrestling was more for my bf benefit anyways and Sasha is just as happy playing chase around the house or playing with a toy.

The other two we have don't play. They're princess's and playing is below them...

[KentuckyGSDLover]

Every German Shepherd I've had has loved to play hide'n'seek. When my daughter was little, she'd tell Bear to sit and stay, then hide and yell okay, and he'd bound off to find her. He absolutely loved to do this. Buddy and I used to play a similar game around the couch (yes, I'd get down on my hands and knees and hide on a side of the couch and we'd peek around at each other then run in circles). Bear loved to chase tennis balls, Buddy was great with a Frisbee. I don't know yet what Reyka will like to play but I suspect Frisbee (because she leaps high and is a high speed runner) will be her game. I only do short gentle "wrestles" (more like play tussles) because I discourage play-biting/mouthing, and they end with a belly rub to keep it from getting wild.