mouth licking is driving me crazy!

T_Dog

my shiba has stopped attacking my AA puppy of 5 months old and started licking his mouth and ears. excessively. the puppy trys to play and my shiba starts licking and licking and licking pushing into the akitas mouth. it is annoying. why is he doing this? should I stop him? the puppy dont seem to be bothered by it. it just bugs me alot... maybe cuz I dont understand it.

T_Dog

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WrylyBrindle

I think your shiba may be interested in the puppy's teething?

T_Dog

ugh I cant get photo bucket to work. I gotta try youtube to show you.

JessicaRabbit

My Shiba used to do that to my pitbull. It was mostly affection, indeed the slurping noise was kind of gross, but I was just grateful my dogs loved each other that much.

Saya

I seen other shiba do this on FB group.. Saya doesn't do mouth licking luckily.

Bella on other hand she loves licking people's face being boxer it is loud and annoying.

Not sure since Saya doesn't do it.

T_Dog

I wish I could get photo bucket to work anyways when I record he behaves better. he actually gets worse then this with the licking but you can tell that most of the time he is trying to lick inside of the mouth or ears. Its like his main objective during play is to lick the mouth. No other dogs I know have played this way. I am worried he is trying to dominate the AA and maybe even instigate a reaction just to correct him if he don't put up with it. cuz right now the Shiba can make the puppy yelp and submit and even bleed. Like I said before though. The Shiba stopped attacking the AA a week ago. after a few weeks of separation and some clever use of a muzzle. The Shiba has finally become friendly to the AA. I am leaning twords stopping him from licking so excessively to try and keep the play at a normal style. Cant wait to hear what you all think of the videos.

Crispy

I've watched four of the six videos and your Shiba and AA seem to love each other very much. The play seemed very healthy and they "took turns" very well. No one seemed super stressed or anxious. The Shiba doesn't even look like he's licking half the time, just "mouth battling" - which my dogs do pretty often too.

Myabee09

That looks almost exactly like what my Shiba does to my Kai. I'll take a video when they get started playing today. My Shiba likes to mother and now my Kai is starting to do it as well. It's like a sign of affection because she licks my husband as well.

shibamistress

My girl Shiba used to do this to my Kai boy too. It was annoying, but it was affectionate, so I just let them do it, unless she was licking in his ears too much (it irritated his ears).

They're cute together! Glad to see they are getting along.

T_Dog

thank you for all the responses I am glad to hear other shiba owners verify that this is just play and not some weird way of domination. I am glad that it is good healthy play. hopefully my AA will have a soft mouth with my shiba when he is full grown. also I would like to get some opinions on this. do you guys think I should stop play if either of them vocalizes? or should I stop play when they raise the jouls and show teeth? tachi my shiba growls some times like he does in tug of war. I been letting him do that. but when he barks especially if it high pitched I seperate quickly. since the shiba has punctured the puppy during an attack when I first got him. if the puppy yelps I immediately seprate and muzzle the shiba. then I let them back together. the muzzle changes the shibas attitude quickly. after 10mins I remove it and allow play. opinions plz.

Crispy

10 minutes seems like a really long "time out". Your Shiba doesn't understand the correlation after that long. I would do a handful of seconds, at best.


I don't know your dogs, and I'm sure the initial scuffle where the Shiba punctured your pup was scary and I'm not discounting it, but the muzzle may not be necessary, imo, if they're just playing and it's an accident when the pup yelps. Just temporary break-up and separation for a few seconds.

jenn

When Rigby gets too excited and overly mouthy during play with us, he gets a time out in the boring bathroom for 30 seconds. That's usually enough time for him to calm down. Have you tried just separating them in a different room for time outs when they get too intense?

T_Dog

yes tachi (my shiba) gets the office room. kenji (my AA pup) gets the kitchen. and Ares (my JA gets the living room. before I special ordered the muzzle tachi stayed in that room alot. because he kept litterally attacking the puppy. I was forced to use the muzzle so I could safely get them in the same room. at first even though the muzzle changed him. he still tried to attack if the puppy got to close. after a few sessions with the muzzle tachi learned that the puppy was not going to hurt him. but I think the time together really helped. we also did lots of walks. I took a few weeks to a month of these types of sessions. and tachi even had to stay with a friend for a few weeks so the puppy could grow. at 13 weeks he was pretty much helpless and vulnerable. it was a long road. but the results are in the videos. suprisingly. my JA was not that hard it only took two corrections and he understood that he was not allowed to be aggressive to the puppy.

slkblaze

My Shiba did that to my Husky/Malamute foster dog xD

JessicaRabbit

If I stopped play any time there were vocalizations or my dogs showed teeth they would never play ever. Here are some pictures of @dlroberts Shiba and my shikoku playing. It was rough and loud. And they LOVE each other.

Don't worry about dominance. It is a misused word even in the behavior community and has proven itself fairly irrelevant. As for your situation, by letting your dogs play and snark a bit you are allowing them to establish their own boundaries. You will get more confident in knowing what is play and when a line is crossed. Obviously don't allow things to escalate too much but a correction can be healthy.
Crispy is totally right that a ten minute time out is very long. By then the pup has no idea for what it is being isolated. Minute tops is all you need.

T_Dog

@slkblaze that is exactly what I was trying to capture. it was as if I was watching my own shiba. :-) @JessicaRabbit I always get scared when that happens. I got pictures of my JA and my shiba doing that.

Saya

Lol that is how Saya plays she looks so darn scary, but it's all good. She loves game of bite Bello on leg so she chases me or jaw sparing..

NavyDog

Yucca & Cayenne are toothy when they play too. My husband and I joke that we can't let them play when we have company cause they might think our dogs are "fighting". They dont even bite. They just make snarly faces & mouth each other. Most of the time they stop when one has a sneezing fit from their nose being scrunched up

T_Dog

here is a picture of tachi's muzzle. he can pant and drink. seeing that he has stopped attacking and started playing. with each play match I trust him more and more. tachi's corrections have went from visious attack to warnings. I have not had to correct with the muzzle for a couple days now. since I am getting good results I will try to stay out of their play as much as possible now. let them set their own boundaries like Jessicarabbit said.

shibamistress

When you get used to watching dogs' body language, especially your own dogs, you can pretty easily tell the difference between rough play and fighting. My dogs have a different pitch for play growls (or my girl Shiba, now gone, did. She had a low play growl, and her growl for fighting was high pitched and sometimes went into a scream). She was quite noisy, though, both in play and anger--it was just the tone/pitch I recognized as being different. (And had to really watch her, since she could slide from play to aggression very quickly.) My Kai only growls in play, so that's clear with him.

In Jessica's pics, esp. the second, you can see that the Shikoku is on her back, and actually looks pretty relaxed...it looks like the kind of self-handicapping dogs do in play. (When my Akita plays with my Kai, he often rolls onto his back and lets the Kai get on top of him or stand over him). The eyes are soft too.

My Akita tends to be very quiet but will play growl some. If he "woofs" he's probably not happy and not playing. Silent snarls are also not a good sign with him, so I watch for that. (Since he's a quiet dog, I have to really watch--sound will not always tell me if he is playing or not).

Myabee09

My dogs play pretty rough. I actually can't take a video right now because Shelby tripped over Mya during play and seems to have pulled a muscle. But I'll agree with everyone about the tone and pitch of their noise changing. I just break them up and make them rest for a minute or two and let them get back to playing. If the arguing keeps up, I'll separate them for longer.

T_Dog

He's really getting in there!

T_Dog

T_Dog

Photobucket blows.