2023-12-24 16:56:00
Playing is vital for dogs, as it strengthens bonds with humans and other canines, boosts emotional health and stimulates intellectual development (Illustrative Image Infobae)
Play is a natural behavior of dogs that, like in the human species, imitates the patterns of adult life. Furthermore, it is essential to guarantee the learning and domestic status of the species.
Play is real-life training and a great opportunity to bond with humans and other dogs. In addition to the physical exercise it involves, it is also very important for the emotional health of the animal, helping it in intellectual development and encouraging it to better understand its environment.
The game helps him to know how things work, to learn basic rules of conduct, to be able to control his strength and to develop skills and abilities, such as reacting correctly to stimuli and to unexpected situations.
By playing you can evaluate your own skills once morest those of others, you can learn to distinguish which dogs and people to trust and learn reciprocity and negotiation skills. Dogs use their mouths as their main instrument because they know the world through their sense of taste and smell. That’s why they smell everything and bite everything.
Through play, dogs learn to control their strength, react to stimuli and develop essential skills for their well-being (Illustrative image Infobae)
Playing with other dogs promotes brute strength and the hunting instinct, while playing with humans develops cooperation and intelligence. In both cases, dogs learn to respect others by releasing physical and emotional energy, which counteracts the appearance of stress, anxiety and violence.
The game not only discharges physical energy but also emotional, mental and discipline and calms many hyperactive or destructive animals. The moments of play are those that should be used to educate the puppy, both in controlling the bite and in the exercise of obedience, and allow them to demonstrate that it is the owner who is in control.
The variants of games with dogs are many and range from the disorganized, sporadic and occasional domestic game to the orderly and systematic sports routine of agility, disc dog, and other canine sports.
Be it one way or another, dogs need to play and they should do so in company and not alone since they are a social species par excellence. A puppy should spend his first two months with the mother and her siblings, if he has them, to learn to control his mouth. This is what is known as bite inhibition. If the puppy bites his mother’s breasts more vigorously or roughly than expected while she is suckling, she will take him out and leave him without food as a drastic method of learning to regulate the intensity of the bite.
Canines use play to explore their environment, using mouth and smell as primary tools to learn regarding and interact with the world (Getty)
The same thing happens if in the game with his brothers or with his own mother the power of the bite is exceeded: the affected person will make a loud and specific moan that will allow him to continue the game if the other controls himself. When the puppy is weaned and joins our house, already in the second stage of his life, the human members of his new pack will be in charge of inhibiting his bite and regulating it.
But how do you do it? Very easy: imitating the mother and repeating her behaviors. Let’s move our dog’s favorite toy intensely (it’s important to move it because he never plays with prey that’s already dead). If he bites our hand during the game, let’s make a high-pitched squeal. Let’s wait a few seconds and then continue playing.
If he bites the hand once more, we return to the screech and end the game. Let’s repeat this procedure in sessions of no more than ten minutes so that the puppy does not get tired or overexcited. We will have acted like his mother did. This way he will understand that he should be careful with his mouth when biting your hand. With an adult dog that bites uncontrollably when playing, you can act in the same way or by hiding a tasty treat in your hand and opening it to reward him only if he acts delicately.
*Professor Dr. Juan Enrique Romero @drromerook is a veterinary doctor. Specialist in University Education. Master in Psychoimmunoneuroendocrinology. Former Director of the Small Animal School Hospital (UNLPam). University Professor in several Argentine universities. International speaker.
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