Is growling while playing okay?

[Nuremees]

My boyfriend and I adopted a three month chow that was abandoned in the desert near our house. In the two months we have had her she has been a joy. (we named her Sachi which means joy in Japanese) I believe that a well behaved dog is one who knows many tricks, listens to her owners and is sociable with strangers and children. Sachi excels in all of these. I know that chows are prone to be aggressive and you should correct any aggression immediately and sternly. However I am a little hazy on the definition of aggression.
I play with Sachi on a daily basis and recently she has been growling while playing (tugging on her rope, chasing me back and forth through the house ect...) is this bad behavior? Should I correct this? Or is she just harmlessly playing? She has never intentionally put her teeth on me or attempted to bite me. She will growl with her mouth open but when she gets close to my hand she licks me.
Is this okay?

[Victory]

Chows do have a 'play" growl, they are known to be very vocal and to have many vocalizations, one of the is the 'play' growl. It is however a dominance thing, from what I've observed the dominant dog is the one that does the growling. I would watch the playing tug a war with her, as well as running from her. Playing tug-a-war turns on her aggressivness to get the toy from you...and while you or your boyfriend may be, (at this time) strong enough to take it from her thus establishing yourselves as dominant, someone else may not be able to, and as she gets bigger you may lose as well and then she'll have an idea that she's boss. Same as running from her, chows often have very strong prey drives, and things that run from her are prey, again right now it's cute and funny, but when she's full grown, and nearly 50lbs it can be serious if it it a child or a small person who doesn't know how to stop the play.

Run with her, have her chase a thrown toy, (some chows actually get 'fetch") if you want to have a lot of fun with her, start her in agility training, she'll get her exercise, (so will you) and she will be less likely to get confused as who exactly is in charge. Right now is the time to establish firm rules and your role the leader, she's open to it, she's looking for it, but in 3-4 more months she'll be a stubborn teenage chow and that's normally when the trouble with behavior starts if firm ground rules haven't been established.

And bless you for taking her in...that is really cool. Also don't be surprised if tricks aren't her best thing...some chows don't do a lot of tricks, and some do them when they feel like it, and some like my boy do all their tricks in order and then expect their treats/reward...

[weuf]

I guess it depends. If you feel threatened at any time during the play shuffle or if the behavior is initiated instead of responded to you should correct it.
The chow we had would do the same. It wasn't until the behavior was started by weufy that we started getting weird about it. If we went to grab whatever he was putting in front of us he would get aggressive and the play growling gradually got louder. I started correcting the behavior when I felt he was asserting dominance to keep the master/pet straight. Since then he has been a perfect dog. Took a few times of correcting the issue before he reverted back though.