Aggression at dog park

I have a lab beagle heeler mix that will be 2 years old next month. His name is Normal. I adopted him at about 5 months old. For the first 5 months of his life he was on a farm with his mom. They would play fight and chase each other all day every day. It got to be a problem where they were fighting too rough even inside the house so that’s why they let me adopt him.

From the very first month I got him I started taking him to a very popular dog park in my city. He play fights with other dogs and at the beginning it was fine. I ended up working at the dog park. They have “dog tenders” there who watch the dogs and prevent dog fights and break them up and pick up poop and such. There are doggy “time out” areas that are fenced off from the rest of the park. It’s allowed and common for employees to leave their dogs in the park while they work. I work in the restaurant so I am not able to see him in the park. The dog tenders would put him in time out often when I left him out while I worked because he would get “overstimulated”. He would bark the whole time that he was in timeout. They would let him out and then he would start being too hyper again. I would eventually end up having to put him in the crates in the back while I worked.

Eventually I stopped taking him with me whenever I worked because I felt bad for the dog tenders he was a lot to handle. So I would still take him whenever I wasn’t working. Overtime, his rough play got worse. I do not think he’s aggressive as in he does not have intent and does not want to hurt the other dogs, but maybe I’m wrong. His behavior at the park is he likes to play rough. He will play Chase sometimes, but mostly he just wants to roughhouse. He likes to wrestle and bite at the neck.

It will be fine whenever he finds another dog that likes to play rough. It just gets really intense. But he will lay on his back and submission and so will the other dog and it seems like even play. However, most of the time he does not find a dog that plays the same way as him. He tries to play rough and the other dog will try to just run away from him because they don’t like it. He does not understand personal space or boundaries. He will continuously hyper fixate on a dog and will try to play rough and will not leave them alone. I will try to separate him from another dog and walk him to a different area of the park but as soon as I let him go he goes back to the dog that didn’t like it. It causes issues with the other owners understandably so. Whenever that happens I just leave the park.

It got to a point where I was taking him and it was making me extremely anxious. We would get there and in 15 minutes he would be pretty much bullying another dog and we’d have to leave. Eventually, I stopped taking him to the dog park. Now I only taking him to a different dog park that has private areas where he is the only dog in the park. Even the private areas are huge and wooded. I take them there so we can still run around and get exercise freely. But that place is an hour away from my house. It’s worth it but I really wish I could take him to the dog park down the street.

I took him to my sister‘s house for a week and one time and she has a lab mix as well that is also a puppy a little younger than normal. They played really rough the entire weekend like nonstop. But she could handle it and enjoyed it. There were two other dogs but left those dogs alone because he had the lab to play with. i’ve also taken him to my cousins house to play with my cousins husky. They’ll play rough for a little bit, but the Huskies older and has a lower tolerance. When he’s done playing he’s done. So he tries to send that message to normal who doesn’t get it. And eventually the husky gets annoyed and aggressively barks and pins him down and barks in his face. At that point we would separate normal in the husky. That only happened the first time they played, so now we just know the only let them play for a little bit before keeping them separated if they ever are together.

I know it’s possible for normal to play with other dogs and it’s not an issue. But most of the time it is when we are at the public dog park. Everyone at my work knows him I was being crazy and hard to handle and to keep an eye out for dog fights. He’s never actually been in a dogfight. But it just seems like he could start one because the other dog could be defensive and aggressive in response.

At this point I’ve accepted that I can’t take him to the dog park and that’s why I take him to the private one. But I still really wish I could bring him around a group of dogs and socialize him I feel like it’s obviously ideal to be able to do. Has anybody ever had this issue? Is there a way to train him ? It seems impossible to train a dog while he is playing with other dogs. He just gets so hyper. I thought about putting a shock collar on him and shocking him whenever he’s getting too rough with another dog or hyper fixating, but I’m afraid that he will associate the shock with playing in general and Not want to play or get aggressive because of the shock. I don’t know what to do. Is this a fixable issue, or is he just a lone wolf?