Hello everyone...
Brief intro... We're raising a 7 month old female Dobe named Kyah. She's a total sweetheart... extremely freindly and pretty well behaved for her age and we're having a blast with her.
Lately she's started to really like to play rough with me. In fact, starting recently she'll occaisionally 'Call me out' for a wrestling match. I'll be sitting on the couch and she'll come up and kind of give me a little growl and bark and if I don't respond she'll really get fired up. Barking, nipping, tugging on me(all very playfully...). If I'm in the mood to play I'll play along and we really get going... she barks/growls and lunges at me and I pretty much push her around and throw her (gently...) on the ground and scratch her belly and tug on her legs and get her seriously fired up. She seems to absolutly LOVE IT. However, the noises that come out of her during this event make my girlfriend pretty nervous. The damn dog sounds vicious... however the entire time we're doing this she'll mouth my hands/arms and never uses any pressure. To her and I we seem to both know that we're playing and having fun. Occaisionally I'll abruptly stop the play by standing up and immediately putting her into a calm sit and then a down. She does it IMMEDIATELY and calms right down very happily.
Am I doing anything wrong? About the only thing I think was doing wrong initially was rewarding the barking/nipping/growling by playing on HER terms and I know that. Because of this I've started to put her into a down-stay and make her calm down when she decides to bark/growl/nip and get excited and only play on MY terms. Ok, not always (I can't help it... I'm defenseless against her cute-ness sometimes...).
Sorry for the long, rambling post but I've been meaning to post this up and get your opinions!
Thanks!
