You’ve now spent time reviewing the stages of development and how it relates to off-leash play. The important thing to take away from this discussion is that age of play matters and understanding the stages of development matters. It may be helpful to remember a similar comparison with humans. Just as you would not expect these children playing kickball or chess to be able to compete at the same level with the adults playing soccer or playing chess, you should not expect all puppies to play well with every adult dog.
Puppy Play
Puppy play has some distinct characteristics. As with all play of any animal of any age, good puppy play is loose and wiggly, and good dog play is exaggerated. With puppies this is even more clear because their bodies are so uncoordinated. As puppy’s learn, their play may fluctuate from day-to-day as they learn new things. Puppy’s sometimes need help knowing when to take a break. It’s good to give puppies extra rest periods as needed. And don’t be surprised if you see puppies experimenting with aggressive displays, mouthing, or humping. This is fairly common.
You need adult dogs who will handicap their behavior a little bit to accommodate the puppy. You also need to know what is typical development for a puppy so you can help the owner recognize when they might need assistance handling a behavioral issue of their pet.
Here are two videos about atypical puppy reactions to be aware of.
Adolescent Dogs
As a dog gets older, play becomes a little more intense. Adolescent dogs require frequent intervention to keep arousal levels down. The dogs that like to body-slam can get very physical, but they will tire out quickly. Supervising these dogs can be exhausting both mentally and physically.
Adult Dogs
Adult dog play starts to calm down a little and the dogs do tend to take more breaks. Because of this fact, the older the dog gets, the less tolerance he sometimes has for the rowdy playstyles of the younger adolescent dogs.