Tuesday Topics 4 - Prohibit or Play Date?

Thanks to everyone for making Tuesday Topics so well received. My little blog gets the most hits on Tuesdays, so keep the comments coming! I always learn a lot from the other puppy raisers, and hopefully, other folks out there are benefitting as well.

My bosses (who are married to each other) have three dogs. The office is at their house, so Cabana gets to see these dogs a couple times a week (I work from my own home the other days). Here's Lily, a French bulldog. She's a chubby little thing, but she's the unequivocal queen of the compound.

The other dogs are Leo, the English terrier, and Olive, the boxer. Leo is a jittery nervous fellow almost all the time, whether Cabana is around or not. But Olive and Cabana are great friends. Closer in size (more so every day), they love to romp around with each other.

Cabana knows it's their house and not hers, and especially because Lily tends to growl and get her hackles up (the little ones gotta show their superiority somehow), Cabana does a great job of being submissive. She calmly lets the other dogs sniff her, and if Lily is in a particularly ornery mood, Cabana goes and sits quietly in a corner (that's how the Still Life with Dog photo came about).

Here they are, out playing by the pool. In the top photo, you can actually see Cabana's jowls flying upward. They're all moving pretty fast!



Here's my question. How much do I control Cabana's play with these dogs? Should I just let Cabana be a dog, or do I need to keep her under control, as a PIT? In the photos above, I did let Cabana romp around the pool with the other dogs, but under very close supervision and only for a few minutes. I get nervous about letting her do too much.

Also, these dogs lack manners--they're not like career changed dogs who've been trained. My bosses' dogs bark a lot, jump all over you, sit on the couch, have food available in their dishes all day, and run around loose in their 5-acre "yard". Are puppies like kids, where you want to keep them away from dogs that might be bad influences on them? Not that I can keep Cabana away from them entirely, since that is where I work, and it is their (the other dogs') house. I can't very well tell my bosses to keep their dogs away from mine.

Since we don't have any other dogs at home, these are the only dogs that Cabana is allowed to play with. And I'd hate to take that away from her. She loves going to the office with me and can barely wait to get out of the car when we drive up. But I also wonder if it sets her up for confusion and disappointment when she can't play with the other dogs at our puppy training group, which is always a big challenge for her (she's just so happy to see the other guide dog puppies and can't contain herself). It's a quandary!