Can you teach your corgi to play nice with other small dogs?

Enzo is almost a year now he plays great with us and he is great with dogs...well most dogs at least. He has always had a problem playing nice with smaller dogs ( under 10 lbs). At the park the big dogs roll him around and he does great with them, usually their owners are a little worried at first but after a while they can clearly see he can hold his own. But most of the time when he tries to entice and romp with a little dog they usually growl and bark at him, which I don't have a problem with ( because they are probably teaching him in doggy language to be polite), but its like he doesn't understand or want to listen to them and continues to play really rough with them. This usually ends with the owners or us pulling him off depending on who gets uncomfortable first. Two of my best friends have small toy breed dogs and we would love for them to all play together but he is just too rough. Please let me know if you have any comments on how to correct him or any similar experiences you have had.

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Permalink Reply by Melissa and Franklin! on April 24, 2011 at 11:51pm

I had the same problem with Franklin when I used to take him to dog parks. The small dog side of the dog park usually had dogs around 10-12 pds and the large dog side had, well LARGE dogs. Franklin grew up with a 5 pound chihuahua that he was really good with, but he grew up with her from when he was a teeny puppy and she put him in his place when he was young. That being said, when Frank was getting really playful he still got really rough with her and I had to intervene. When they both were running offleash I always worried about her because he would plow her over running full speed. I just don't let Frank play with small dogs because he can't help being a corgi....they are just very rough and tumble when they play. When standing still, he is great, he will let the chihuahua jump on his back and chew and bite but the minute they start running all bets are off.

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Permalink Reply by Sam Tsang on April 25, 2011 at 7:39am

Hi Jaclyn, dogs react to how their owners handle themselves, you see most drama queen pups who scream bloody murder are the ones that often get picked up by their owner when things got "serious", most would give a semi logical excuse like " he / she just wanna play" to mask their dog's behaviour. Truth is, it's the human that wants their dog to get along with anybody and every dog, but is that really realistic?

Lets look at this in the human world, we all have different personality, comfort zone radius, ways to express ourselves and to socialize. Some of us need to be the social butterfly, enjoy being the centre of attention. Others are totally fine with a few close friends, slow to warm up, preferring quality over quantity. It's important to push our dogs to a certain extent, but also accepting them for who they really are, being able to call out their BS when need to and not get manipulated by their action.

So here's my suggestion, if you and Enzo have such encounter again, take him to the opposite end of the park and mingle with another crowd, dog park is an open party, lets focus on the good times :)

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Permalink Reply by Beth on April 25, 2011 at 10:16am

Jack plays well with my aunt's little JRT because she can outrun him. There were problems at first because she kept trying to wrestle and needless to say Jack would flatten her. But she soon figured out that wrestling with a bigger dog is bad and playing chase is better. So in other words, partly it depends on the small dog getting the point that wrestling is not the best game with a larger dog.