I want to describe something that happened a week ago and I'm not sure what to make of it.
To preface this, I should say that Kenya has been as a whole very good with other dogs. Now I've had her less than a year, but I've never seen her growl, lunge, or bark at another dog in an aggressive or reactive manner. She has made some grunts and short wuffs, but those happen during play. She has gotten along famously with Coke since day one. She plays very well with our friend's male German Shepherd. For shows, she rides on the seat and stays in hotel rooms with my friend's female Portie. At the training club, we let dogs off lead and she has been fine with all the other dogs except the ones that are dog aggressive towards her (in which case she will jump back and run away, or show her teeth and walk away). Last night at the club, I let her off lead with my friend's Portie and her two Goldens. Kenya hasn't really met the Goldens before, but she played tug with them and did some wrestling with the younger one. She had more fun playing with them than she did during class! This winter, I found a stray Bichon and took him in b/c he was coated in ice and we had a weather warning for the low temperature. She did not care at all when I took the dog in the house. He slept between my legs in bed, with Kenya and Coke on their dog beds in our room and there were no issues while he was in our house. She has also met my friend's Rottweiler and the neighbor's pit bull and played in our yard with both of these dogs. We've never had any issues coming up to strange dogs on walks (some of them off leash and running loose!) and Kenya has passed her CGC twice already. So at least up to this point, I'm convinced she's a pretty good dog as far as interacting with other dogs. Many of the dogs she's met and played with are/were young, like 8-10 months, but all have been fairly large breeds.
Now last week we were at Kenya's breeders for a club meeting. I took her along b/c they wanted to see her after the meeting. Her breeder currently has a little puppy who is a onesie litter. I'd guess the pup was 12-14 weeks at the time. We had Coke along and the puppy had a great time chasing Coke in circles around our circle of chairs while DH supervised (he was not part of the meeting). After the meeting I brought Kenya in. The puppy ran up to her and started barking in her face. At first Kenya looked a little surprised and tried to look away, but the puppy kept following her and barking at her. Then Kenya curled her lip at the puppy, but the puppy did not seem to care and kept trying to jump in Kenya's face. Kenya was sort of going around the circle, meeting all the people and when that was done the breeder put the puppy in a crate. She was showing me some training tips and I saw Kenya sniffing at the crate and then walking away, like she wasn't really bothered by the puppy or interested.
I'm just wondering about this b/c I have very little experience with puppies. At the shelter, I do not volunteer in the puppy area b/c they are quarantined for disease and you cannot go near them if you work with adult dogs (which I prefer). I guess I thought that an adult dog would know a puppy is a puppy and allow more annoying behavior, kind of like how we allow babies to cry and whine but not older kids. Maybe her showing teeth was part of play, I don't know. I mentioned it to my trainer and she said the bottom line is one dog was being rude to another and the other is never out of line for saying "stop" by showing teeth, it doesn't matter that one dog was a puppy.