Max growled at us quite a few times, when we first brought him home. One time he even trapped my husband in the guest room, growling, and wouldn't let him out! That was just a few days after we brought him home.

There are certain things that set him off, which we just don't do anymore. We don't usually play hide and seek, because he gets really aggressive then. If we hide under a blanket he'll actually jump right up on us, growling fiercely, and rip the blanket off. When we play with him, we're really careful not to do anything that leads to him jumping up on us because it seems like when he gets airborn, he gets more aggressive.

We do show our dominance to him in every possible way, to keep him in his place. I place my head in the exact position you described every time I have contact with him. I take things out of his mouth, and never let him on the furniture. I don't think I'd recommend this to most people, but whenever he opens his mouth like he's going to start mouthing me, I put my hand in his mouth and gently grab his lower jaw. He hates that and it teaches him not to mouth. Of course that could be dangerous.

Another thing we've started doing is whispering commands. We whisper "sit" as quietly as we can and call him to us using whispers. We reward him with tons of attention when he responds to that, and it helps him to realize he has to pay attention to us and always listen.

We do allow playful growling - he talks to us that way all the time. But if he every growled aggressively I would definitely put him in his place.