Dog Dominance Advice?

A Call for Advice –

As I’ve written many times before, Joe loves to play with much larger dogs. When he goes to daycare he has always insisted on being with dogs that outweigh him by as much as 80 pounds – he’s never met a 130 pound dog he didn’t like. He is also insistent about playing, if a dog is uninterested Joe will do his level best to engage him, he’ll bat at him, leaping about and land in a play bow, dancing and barking. And he’ll do this until I pull him away or until the other dog snaps at him.

He’s never hurt another dog, although he does like to grab the loose fur around their neck and hold on. He’ll wrestle another dog to the ground but lets them up pretty quickly because he doesn’t seem to want the game to stop.

Last weekend at the dog park, Joe had found a 100 pound, 8 month old Rottweiler to play with, but the Rotti was far more shy and submissive than Joe. Joe raced around the Rotti and the dog parried and boxed with him but without much enthusiasm.

His owner said to me, “Your dog is really aggressive.”

“Oh, he’s just a puppy. He’s still learning how to play.”

“No, he’s really aggressive.” She was very insistent about this.

I said that I’d do some research on it. She recommended obedience classes (which I do intend to do, once our out of town visitors have gone).

I have never perceived Joe as aggressive, dominant certainly, with Alpha aspirations definitely. Now, it may be a question of semantics, but it seems that ‘aggressive dog’ has a specific and important legal definition, a dog that poses a threat to people or animals.

I’ve seen Joe be wrestled to the ground again and again, I’ve seen him play with other pups, but I’ve never seen him look intent, look angry, never seen him actually hurt any dog, never had any reports of anything like that at daycare either. Nonetheless, he’s my responsibility, I want to always protect him. I don’t want to find out later that I’d been in denial about a problem, when something’s gone terribly wrong.

B. (my boyfriend) feels that this woman doesn’t understand the difference between ‘dominant’ and ‘aggressive’ – but I wonder what you all think? Any advice?