by When puppies learn to play in their first few weeks of life, they’re practicing for all the physical and mental activities that they will need to be a successful adult dog. Puppy play begins in the litter when puppies are about three weeks old and teaches them physical control, social relations and life lessons.
A willingness and desire for a puppy to play with us and other dogs are among a dogs’ most endearing qualities. A new puppy will play with its mother and litter mates during its first formative weeks and will learn about social relationships, communication skills, and how to develop lifelong bonds.
How does a puppy learn physical control?
Through active play, puppies we’ll develop a variety of physical abilities such as manual dexterity, improved coordination, how to grasp with their forepaws, the effectiveness of shoulder slams, and the advantage of momentum.
This puppy play allows them to experiment and practice movements and actions in a safe situation. A puppy will also learn about the authority of the top dog through play and how to inhibit they’re biting.
If a puppy bites their mom too hard, she will reprimand them by biting back. If the puppy bites another pup too hard and hurts it, the hurt puppy will squeal in pain and stop playing. This is an important lesson for puppies and is at the root of how we can eventually control useful exuberance when we train dogs.
Poorly controlled playful activity can lead to social problems later in life for your dog. It’s important to channel your puppies enjoyment of play into creative activities. Puppies that are denied playful activity with other puppies during their first formative months may end up not enjoying social encounters with dogs later in life.
Why are doggie social relations are important?
Play helps puppies develop a social hierarchy in their litter. They will test each other through playfighting, play biting, and strength to test their limits and to see how far they can go.
Puppy play also introduces them to cooperative behavior. Two puppies within a litter may join forces to see how far they can go. Puppy play serves to reinforce inherent differences in the littermates’ personalities.
Puppies learn about these differences and will incorporate the understanding of the differences into their play. A naturally dominant puppy may learn how to play submissive or how to accidentally fall down in order to permit the lower ranking dog to physically dominate it. Puppies learn the very important lesson that their relationships with each other are fluid.
Through play, a puppy learns how to show tolerance, friendliness, lack of aggression, and willingness to cooperate. These skills all help form good future relationships with humans.
Life lessons puppies learn from play
Through youthful play, puppies will develop a range of attitudes that will last their lifetime. In normal puppy play, sexual, predatory or aggressive behavior does occur, but it is often out of context. Within the dog pack, these types of play lead to the development of confident dogs.
Dogs will learn leadership, dependence, and context in order to play with other dogs in a non-threatening manner. If your puppy shows potentially dominant behavior, avoid play fighting with it as this could set the foundation for later dominance aggression problems.
Chases, ambushes and pouncing can all be mutually enjoyable fun for your puppy, but you need to keep a close watch on a dominant puppies body language to see if they’re playing is also being used to threaten other puppies.
During threatening play, a dominant puppy will place its paw on another puppies back and it may stare directly into the other puppies eyes. It could also lift its lips, snarl, show his teeth or raise his hackles. These are all signs of aggressive behavior and it’s important that you show your puppy the difference between aggressive behavior and relaxed play.
Play is important to your dog throughout all stage of their life. They will learn social hierarchy by playing with his littermates. As they grow and develop they will learn how to control their play with less dominate dogs and how to control his emotions when playing with several dogs at once – particularly with dogs that have varying personalities.
Be sure to expose your new dog/puppy to other dogs as soon as possible and seek out local dog parks and organized puppy or dog play events to expose your dog to all sorts of different kinds of dogs and dog personalities.
