Our older dog went after the puppy last night...

[Kim and Kashi]

We have had our new puppy for just over 2 weeks now.  Kashi is 10 weeks old.  Sadie is our older dog, she is 11.  The initial meeting went fine between the 2 of them.  We continue to keep an eye on them anyway because the puppy is very nippy and always following Sadie around.  I can tell she is annoyed by it, but she never does anything to him.   She has growled at him a couple times, only to be corrected by someone nearby.  However, last night I went into the laundry room and was not in there for 20 seconds before I heard Sadie go after him.  Then I heard him yelping and he ran to me.  He was OK, and she didn't really hurt him, she just scared him, and me and everyone else in the house.  My daughter even came running down from upstairs.  Sadie knew she had done something wrong, and held her head low and wanted to go outside (away from him I am guessing).  My problem is this...

I realize that at some point Sadie has to establish to him that she is the boss.  At this point, I don't think he realizes that because he is basically getting away with nipping at her and chasing her around, because she will not do anything to him in front of any of us.  But, as we learned from last night, she is going to do it, and we can't watch them every second of the day.  So, does anyone have any ideas how to let him know where he stands in the pack without chancing him getting hurt?  I know that Sadie did not intend to hurt him, only to "put him in his place".  But, I can't risk her hurting him...  I want Kashi to know his place so that he will stop when she is aggravated.  He follows her everywhere she goes, and most of the time they are fine.  They play out in the yard and get along well.  I am just scared something is going to happen if he doesn't shape up! 

Any ideas would be appreciated!

Thanks, Kim

[Carla, Lucca and Izzy]

All this advice is good but just be careful. Ben, our sweet mellow 9 yo Golden Retriever snapped at Izzy Xmas morning and DID hurt her eye. She is fine but it scared the death out of me. Lucca, our 2 yo GD is fine with her but in the beginning when Izzy was smaller (2 months ago) I watched them and never left them alone together. Now I feel more comfortable.

Ben is also MUCH better with her although I am on guard and still won't leave them alone. Izzy is a puppy and puppies love to jump in the older dog's face. Older dog doesn't like this and remember...puppy teeth hurt!!! When we brought Lucca home Ben was 7 and he is so mellow and Lucca intimidated him. It took him around 4 months to realize Lucca was fun to play with. Now they are best buds and Izzy and Ben will get there too. So will Sadie and Kashi

[Debbie and Thomas]

Our son brought over his 10 week old French bulldog and he was all over over 2 yr old dood's toys.  I cud tell the dood Thomas was bugged by that but he just sat there a bit confused and lett the puppy play.  Then the puppy tried to climb on top of the Thomas.  He growled first as a warning and we moved the puppy away.  Then as we were talking it happened again...another growl...again we moved the pup.  When it happened again Thomas became quite agressive.  It looked like he bit the puppy but he was snarling and growling at him right up against his skin.  Fortunately none of us freaked out...we saw that the puppy was fine and the day went on normally.  the good thing was that my son and his fiance were quite relaxed about the whole thing.  They said that Thomas was just setting the rules and now 4 mths later they are good friends.  I feel for you because we would like to get another doodle within the next year and even though Thomas is very calm and good natured I wonder about the calamity of bringing a puppy home.

[Carla, Lucca and Izzy]

I think it's easier to bring a puppy home when you have a younger dog. But then again I think it's also the older dog's personality. As I said above, 7 yo Ben was a little stand-offish with Lucca for the first few months and I never felt leary with the 2 together and now they are best friends. I think in our current situation Ben is 2 years older and it makes a big difference in his behavior.

[Nancy, Ned, Clancy, and Charlie]

Kashi may have learned his place last night!  Our older dog would give the younger one one nip one the nose and that took care of the problem.  Our Springer growled at Ned as a pup but never actually took control.  Our Springer and our adult rescue took quite a while to settle their differences.  If they argue over a toy or bone, we take it away.  If Kashi is nipping and bugging Sadie, they need to settle it. You need to be diligent about not leaving them together for any length of time and then you need to put up with a bit of the place finding.

[Kyoko]

When we got Charlie, Butter was 14. He was quite annoyed by Charlie's puppy antics. She wanted to jump on him, follow him, play with him and nip at him. He did growled at her few times, and once went to put her in place which she cried.( Never was bitten or anything like that ) But, when she was very young, she didnot have a free roam of the house as he did, and she was mostly tether to one of us, and /or in a baby gate/pen for house breaking purposes. So, I did not have to worry about Butter getting at her while we cannot see. She quickly learned her place and stop bothering him.  May be you can think of a way to supervise puppy while he is still young. But mostly, I think they work things out themselves.....

[Kim and Kashi]

An update on Kashi and Sadie. Well, things have smoothed out quite a bit. Sadie has handled the situation superbly. She has growled and "knocked down" Kashi a few times. She has not hurt him at all! Kashi definitely knows when to leave her alone. He will usually will just sit down with a bewilderd look on his face or runs over and sits with one of us. I am really proud of Sadie. She is so sweet. We continue to keep a close eye on the situation. Thank you once again for all the great advice and examples. It really helped us out a lot!

[Carla, Lucca and Izzy]

Isn't it wonderful when you can see the "light at the end of the tunnel":) So glad to hear it's going better with Kashi and Sadie. Lucca and Izzy are doing wonderfully well also. It helps validate why we got #2 doodle and feels oh so good!!!!

[Nicky, Riley & Boris]

I don't have a Doodle yet as we are a family in preparation but I have introduced Puppies to my home before where there was one dog already in residence who really had to adjust to a new, bouncy, playful puppy.  I have also successfully introduced kittens to dogs who only knew that cats were for chasing prior to them becoming part of our family. 

I would definitely use the crate for any times when you are not able to be in the same room/space as both animals.  By putting the puppy in the crate the adult dog and the pup can get used to being in the same room and get close without the older dog hurting the pup or the pup getting out of hand.  Your adult dog needs to know that this pup is now part of the family.  The crate will offer a safe way of doing this.  If you adopt this strict rule you will find that in a few weeks there should be no bother at all.  In the meantime say a strict no and distract them both if play gets out of hand.  The Puppy needs to respect Sadie as she is top dog.  Give Sadie lots of attention so she knows she isn't being left out and take the Puppy out separately as much as possible, for example for walks and short training exercise so that the Pup know that you are boss.  I hope this is helpful.  I think that crates offer lots of solutions to minimise the possibilities of things going wrong but obviously don't leave the Puppy in the crate for any more than an hour at a time and make sure it is after play when puppy is tired.