In November we spent a week or so deer hunting in southern Minnesota with Randy's daughter and son-in-law. Of course I brought my Great Dane with us, and hoped he'd get along fine with their three dogs.
Both older dogs (a neutered male yellow lab and a female cocker spaniel) have been introduced to Savage before, and they really don't pay much attention to him. For his part, Sav pretty much ignores those two also. The un-neutered year old chocolate lab is a different story.Thor is a typical young lab, which is to say, crazy. All he wants to do is play, but my "puppy" took all this attention a little too seriously. Savvy apparently felt he needed to display his dominance, and kept pinning Thor to the ground, growling at him, and generally being a bully. This went on for the whole first afternoon, and luckily the lab is the sort of dog that takes that kind of thing in stride and submits.
Once they got their relationship figured out they both seemed to relax. Thor was very polite around Savage, and Savage was civil, even though he "reminded" Thor occasionally who was boss. On the following days, they became buddies playing outside, completely exhausting themselves tearing around the yard. Still, in the house and around all the people, my boy remained overly corrective of Poor Thor. Therefore, while we were out hunting in the mornings the dogs stayed in different bedrooms, and when we were eating dinners they had to be seperated in the house.
At five years old now, my lovable Savvy is still a gentle boy, but seems to lose his patience more and more with puppies or really energetic dogs. Must be part of him growing older. Even so, it's nice to see him let himself cut loose and play with the youngsters every now and then.