Thought I would share Aayla interacting with an over the top adolescent. We’ve known Jesse since she was a little pup. She is now 8 months. I haven’t aloud a lot of play before because Jesse just attended agility classes with us (owner has an older dog in the class) and I didn’t want Aayla playing at agility, and often enough Aayla was leashed and would get frustrated with Jesse quickly because Jesse would jump all over her.
Jesse is in a hyper adolescent phase where she doesn’t really stop when corrected. She really bothers the 2 year old border collie brother. Aayla has been a pretty good playmate because she has been correcting appropriately and trying to shut down overly hyper play. Yet she is still willing to play and wrestle with her. Its a mostly healthy dynamic for Jesse to learn. I do sometimes have to interfere when Aayla is trying to pin Jesse down and hold her there.
I was working on both of them learning to ‘break’ and interrupt the play when I was not liking where it was going. I am pretty happy with Aayla. She corrects well, and isn’t trying to escalate the play like she used to. I wish she would offer more lay down play (like she does at the end) to share equal roles in the play. I also still have to interrupt her standing over the top and pinning behavior. I’m trying to find the reason for that. Could be a form of trying to get Jesse to settle, but its not something I like.
