There's an excellent article on "bite inhibition" on this site... changed my perception of letting Dante mouth me. (And BTW when he was trying to get a bite of a "big boy treat" I held for another dog, he punctured my thumb... and let me know that when he'd previously "chewed" on my fingers, he WAS inhibiting his bite).
I agree with YorkieMama... supervised play between the pups is fine. Right now I'm in the 8th day of dog-sitting my son's American Mastiff pup, who at 18 weeks is near 50 pounds. My 16 week old Biewer Yorkie is 3 1/2 pounds. Yes, I scoop Dante up a lot if Dozer (the mastiff) gets rambunctious. And if Dozer tries to "pounce", I grab his face and tell him "NO!" in a loud voice.
I won't lie - it's tiring to be so eternally vigilant! And the mastiff spends a lot more time in his crate than he would if I didn't have Dante, because when I can't focus on them (fixing dinner, for example), I have to crate him. But the two dogs will spend a lot of time around each other over the next 15 years (I hope!), so we want them socialized - to each other, and to all kinds of other dogs they may meet.
Sorry for the rant. |