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Location: Ohio, USA
Joined: Oct 2015
Posts: 25
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Our Aussie mix has a very strong herding instinct to the point of obsession. If he sees something moving fast he has the drive to go after them and nip at them, controlling their movements. This can be seen in herding dogs, which German Shepherds are.
As mentioned above, it can also simply be a play behavior. While it is somewhat controlling (older and more dominant dogs tend to display it more) it generally isn't meant to cause a problem. However, sometimes older dogs will purposefully break up excitement in play if they think it's getting out of hand. Dogs have their own reasoning for thinking that a play session should end, and sometimes it can be hard to understand. Our oldest pair would always try to break up play between the younger two dogs like over-protective parents or something.
With our Aussie mix we continue to work with him but plenty of exercise, teaching him to sit and watch us instead of the dogs, and plenty of calling off has helped immensely. He still does it sometimes, but he's learned how to have better control of it.
Hope this helps!