The IMPORTANCE of play

Play is something we may think of as a purely pleasurable, recreational activity, but for the wider animal kingdom it has a much more vital purpose — particularly for animals like dogs who have long owed their survival to their ability to work together as a social group or pack.

Play is really part of the social glue that keeps them together, which is why you tend to see it so often in dogs who are related, live together, or have otherwise forged a close social bond when they were younger.

Play is also the way a dog starts rehearsing for real life, starting from very early puppyhood. To the more casual observer, the umpteen games and tussles of a new litter of puppies may seem like ‘fun’, but the puppies will also be learning so much about themselves and each other, like who is stronger or weaker, who they can more easily bully or take toys or food from, and the limits of how hard they can bite each other without triggering a painful retaliation (otherwise known as bite inhibition).

LESSONS LEARNED FOR THE FUTURE

Often what puppies learn from their earliest play interactions with others can be carried on into their later life and behaviour. This can include a sense of greater inferiority or vulnerability, greater ability to bully or dominate others, or the rewards of using aggression to keep others away from their ‘stuff’. This is why it is so important for any breeder to try to better understand and control what puppies learn from their play (see ‘The lessons of play’ right) to ensure any potentially more harmful things aren’t learned by dogs during this highly formative phase of life.

Things that more greatly concern me, when watching any litter of pups play, are individuals who seem more persistently detached or distanced from their littermates, and less interested in becoming actively involved with their games, as this could suggest a dog with lower social abilities. Neither do I like bullying pups who not only play more roughly and aggressively with others, but do not stop when the pup they are bullying yelps to signify his unhappiness or distress.

Again, the bullying pup could well take the same behaviour forward into his future interactions with other dogs. And the pup who is bullied, realising that the normal code for making another dog stop hurting them — namely a yelp — does not work, could learn to become more fearful of other dogs and their intentions, or even more defensive themselves.