I just got my first Basset this past July. I saw him come careening around the corner and cross check his littermates out of the way of the food dish and just knew he was the one for me.

He is 15 weeks now and I have noticed him become much more active and playful, which I love. The question I have is that I see him play with my other dogs and he is very fierce and vocal. I am not so sure he is just playing. My perception is screwy,though. I own bully breeds, an American Bulldog and an American Pit Bull Terrier, and those dogs play hard...and I mean hard. I am used to that and expect it of them. So I can't figure out if I am just unused to seeing hard play in other breeds or if Owen is somehow loony.

He is very barky and growly, very loud and very very determined to bully the other dogs into play or to take from them whatever interesting toy they have at the moment. Is this normal?

I'm not sure I would say normal, but not unusual. Some bassets can be very vocal, and often have a wide range of strange sounds they will make depending on what they want.

Bassets are not usually mean or aggressive, but their play can seem that way. My two get very wild, but if one yelps the other stops immediately. I've seen my female do the WWF off the ropes move, she will run and get the male to follow her, then jump up on the couch spin around and jump off on him as he goes by. Sometimes I stop them as they get so rough I'm afraid they will hurt each other. They growl but it never seems serious, just play.

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Lol, that sounds hilarious! I was expecting a more laid back dog, but I am very ok with him being spunky. I was just worried something was wrong. I never expected such passion from a Basset other than passion for food!

That is one of the big misconceptions about bassets, while they are not super active and do sleep a lot, when they are awake they tend to be on the wild side. I attribute the misconception to the fact that they are so crazy it is hard to take a picture of them when they are not sleeping. Therefore people see more pictures of bassets sleeping than anything else.

I remember back in the TV show Coach, Jerry Van Dyke's character has a basset named Killer. When ever the dog was part of the show you either saw him sleeping in a wagon with Jerry pulling him, or you saw an empty wagon, heard crashing sounds, and Jerry running around yelling "No Killer, no!" I thought that was a great characterization of a basset, asleep or running wild, not much in between.

At least all three of the bassets we have had have been that way.

This is back when our current two were about 3 months old,, they are not almost 8 months.
www.youtube.com/user/hig4s?feature=mhum ... mWO1OJp7XY

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Lovely video! Made me smile. That kind of play is a bit tame for Owen, but pretty close.