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Hi all, I'm new to this forum but I wanted to get the opinions from those who have experience introducing a new puppy to an older dog. Our current dog is very picky with other dogs because of a bad experience he had when he was around 3 years old. He was jumped by our old neighbors 3 pitbulls so he gets nervous when dogs jump on him during play. But, we recently adopted a lab/Australian shepherd mix at 8 weeks old to be able to grow with our older dog and to learn his mannerisms and how to behave around him. Our dog is currently 8 yrs old. It's been 2 weeks with the puppy and things have been going well I think. The older dog does occasionally growl in closer quarters with the puppy and we have been separating them when he seems agitated and giving them separate food areas and toys to avoid territorial situations. Today it seems like the older dog finally opened up to play and I recorded them. I want to make sure what I was observing was play and not aggression. Our older dog has always played very rough with another dog we had that passed away from cancer a year ago. They used to jump and knock each other over and growl but it never led to a snapping or snarling fight. Our older dog was doing the same to the puppy, intermittent growling and jumping and a little knocking over but it didnt seem aggressive to me but I wanted others opinions on what they think. The puppy is always trying to engage in play and when the older dog did jump around, the puppy falls over exposes his belly and kind of freezes before continuing on with play. I want to make sure this is normal too and just him making it clear that our older dog is the alpha Male in the situation. I've tried to upload the video and even trimming it but it it too big to be viewed. It was roughly 3 minutes of play with our dog bouncing around, occasionally knocking the puppy over but putting his butt in the air, lowering his head to the puppy, doing a short light growl then bouncing around again. Sometimes the puppy just kept falling over and had a hard time staying up. Sometines he would run over the puppy and knock him down that way but not step on or bite him. Thanks for all of your input!
