I have three dogs, two females and a male. The Male is Sirius, a eight-month-old Jack Russel Terrier. The female is, Polaris, a year-old dog of undeterminable breed. (The other female is a real grumpy bitch, so the other dogs don’t bother her.) All of the dogs are fixed.
For the past three days, I have witnessed Sirius trying to mount Polaris. Since she’s twice his size, and apparently confused about what he’s doing, there hasn’t been much success.
Even though I know that puppies could not result even if he were successful, I find myself stopping him. “Stop trying to fuck your sister!” I bellow.
Hence, my dilema. I don’t really have a reason for making them stop, other than human prudism, and concern that if I had guests, they might go at it in front of God and everyone.
We have a pack of 8 dogs and we definitely discourage that behavior. “Humping” actually isn’t a sexual behavior, its a dominance behavior. Dominance behaviors can be pre-cursors to fighting. I don’t like to tolerate any kind of posturing or other pre-fight behavior- plus its just rude :). The other dog doesn’t like it usually, and to me its no different than telling a pushy kid to back off the less assertive kid. Its an opportunity also to establish your leader status in the pack.
My one dog typically only humps the other when we have guests. I think that he likes to display his dominance.
We make him stop, but I don’t think it’s any big whoop. It’s been going on for years, and it’s not like my guests are the Queen of England and the Pope.
Mainly, we make it stop because I don’t think it’s good for the back, hips or knees of the humped one. And we try to protect his fragile psyche.
Sometime’s when he gets humped, I just tell him, “go to your happy place”. I bet even the queen would laugh at that.
A an old friend from high school had two standard poodles: a “fixed” female, and a not fixed male. For years, the poor boy tried (unsuccessfully) to mate Lady. She’d just sit down, and wait till he got discouraged. It was funny at first, but after a couple years it became excruciating to watch - you could almost see the look of frustration in that dog’s face.
Eventually, Brandy (the friend’s mom) got the male fixed. He died a few months later, apparently of terminal vexation. Poor fella.
As long as they’re all fixed, I say let 'em have at it.
I have an older Great Dane female. She naps most of the day. My 1-year old (45 lb.) female mixed breed dog crawls up on her back when Missey is laying down and merrily humps away. I’ve never had two female dogs, is it common for females to be the humpers? Both of them are spayed.
It is rather funny. Well, for me anyway. Missey doesn’t seem to like it much.
It depends. I think it is a good idea to make sure the dogs know you are the boss.
Our bitchy spayed female mastiff would constantly try to dominance-hump our neutered, bigger, good-natured male. He’d just stand there and let her have at it. She definitely ruled over him (she would steal her food and he would let her). After awhile I’d make her stop the humping; it just sort of exasperated me. She even tried to hump our youngest son, which I found interesting, because in terms of status, I guess you could say he was the lowest in the family. He not only threw her off, he put her in a down stay, which I thought was a good idea.
Now the Old Man is gone, the female is the matriarch and we have a new pissy little male. Before he was fixed, he would hump most any canine–but not people. It was definitely sexual, and we neutered him. When the female tries to hump him, he lies down. She has slowed down herself, which is good, because he is not nearly as good-natured as our old guy was. He has growled and even snapped at her.
We have a small fluffy male dog named Milford and another dog of similar size named Randy. Milford humps Randy most evenings after he’s had his meal. My wife sometimes tries to discourage it, but mainly because she doesn’t like to see Milford’s penis dangling down towards the ground (it is rather ugly.) I don’t have any problem with it.
P.S., Randy is a Non-Breather, an Inanimate, the latest in a string of stuffed toys that Milford has used and abused until their fur is so horribly crusty that even the washing machine can’t soften them up–yeck!
I have to share this- I have three dogs, and all are involved in the humping game. All males, all fixed.
My Shar-Pei (Yoda) is a chronic nail biter. I don’t know what the deal is, but he can sit for hours at a time happily grooming his nails. Whatever floats your boat, I guess. My terrier Foster (half his size) will come up behind him and hump away to beat the band. Yoda lays there, Paris Hilton like, just cleaning his nails and completely ignoring his brother humping his butt.
Yoda is also a humper- sometimes he humps our Rottie (also male) and Foster humps Yoda like a big, gay, humping train. It’s a crazy world I live in.
I used to babysit at a house where they had 2 females; they wouldn’t hump each other, but they would 69 in the living room regardless of audience. I was warned by the owners that it would happen and sure enough… I can’t imagine how much more embarrassing that is than humping. Although, the friend I had whose dog would take cushions off the couch & hump them in front of company seemed pretty mortified.
Polaris sometimes lays for hours and gnaws at the hair between her toes.
Bean, the eldest, has always done something that cracks me up: she’ll give herself a good old energetic scratch and when she stops, she’ll lift the foot that did the scratching up to her nose and delicately sniff it.
As others have said, you should put the kibash on it; it’s a dominance issue. Although if you want the humping dog to be more dominate, I guess you can let it continue.
Our 1-yr old Jack Russell (Heloise Abelard) humps our 2-yr old Ginger tabby (Victor Hugo). Generally, we stop it after we stop laughing. Unfortunately, Heloise has not tried to hump Gertrude Stein, my 2-yr old shih tzu. We have tried everything to have Heloise establish “top-dog” dominance over Gertie, who needs to come down a few pegs. Heloise, however, won’t hump Gertie.
She is. I have no clue as to her breed. No one does. She has long, reddish hair and green eyes. There may be some retriever in there. Hell, there may be some dingo for all I know.
She is an itchy creature, but there doesn’t seem to be a medical reason (I asked the vet.) She just seems to like gnawing on herself. Feet, hips, wrists, tail-- anything she can reach. Nor does she do it compulsively-- just once in a while. She stops if we tell her to.
She yanks pretty hard at her toe-hairs (meaning the hair between the toes on the bottom of her feet. It extends about a half an inch longer than her foot pads.) I’m amazed it doesn’t hurt. She always has this look on her face like, “Hey! That doesn’t belong there!”
