Two male dogs trying to be dominant

meoklmrk91

New neighbours moved in a few doors down, I have a friendly male who likes to play they had a poorly socialised, un confident male, they adopted him from someone else, my guy is nuetered, theirs isn't but is still young and will be in the near future.

After some hiccups with their guy, due to his poor socialisation he growled at other dogs and jumped as thought to get at them, we slowly introduced them and they seemed to play fine while sorting out who was going to be the dominant dog, more recently however they aren't playing so well, my guy wants to be dominant, the other fella follows him around, licks his mouth etc. but they keep sort of jumping on eachother, one paw sometimes too, they seem to want to be on top of eachother, no humpinb though, my guy doesn't take to this so well and gives a warning snarl, it would be great if they could get along and play with them being so close by it could be a regular thing. What can we do to get all the bossing around to stop and for them just to enjoy playing?

DBB

When you introduce one kid to another, and they get on okay at first but then start having little squabbles over toys, even pushing each other, poking at each other, stealing toys off each other... Do you describe this as dominant behaviour from the children?
Probably not.
Yet it is exactly the same process that's going on between these two dogs. They're simply trying to get to know each other, to assess how far they can push each other in certain situations, testing each other's boundaries. It happens between humans all the time, we just have different ways of doing these things than dogs, yet nobody would ever think to describe human behaviour in these scenarios as dominant or submissive!
I'd suggest doing some mutual bonding stuff with them, top amongst these is getting them out for walks together. If they're interacting with one another freely, and one starts to overwhelm the other (a common occurrence especially when one dog lacks social skills), step in and separate them for a minute or two until they calm down, then let them interact again.
You will get growling, you will get body-barging, you will get air-snapping, you will get them slapping each other with their feet, you will get barking...this is all fine, all normal. As long as both dogs are comfortable enough to stick around one another and you don't have one making repeated efforts to get away but being relentlessly pursued or physically attacked, leave them be!

Knine

That sounds like fairly normal getting to know each other dogs. I would regularly have 5/6 or even more dogs together. There is no dominant dog just a gang of dogs having fun. Most of them are entire too.