22 DecEpisode 106 | Dog Training Q and A! 12/17/2020: How can I get my dog to stop humping other dogs in order to exert his “dominance?”

This is a bonus episode: A recording of a live Q and A.

In this episode, Annie talks about humping: Why dogs do it, how to get them to not do it, and why everyone should just chill out about it.

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Mentioned in this episode

Episode 26 | Teach a foolproof DROP and COME using Classical Conditioning

 

Transcript:

[Intro]

Annie:

I was going to talk just briefly about humping. Got a question: How do I get my malel neutered dog to stop trying to hump other male dogs to assert his dominance. 

 

So let let's talk about that. The simplest answer to the question is you should work on getting your dog's attention. You can manage a lot of behaviors if you have the ability to get your dog to come to you, to pay attention to you when you need your dog to do so. And you can do that by practicing getting your dog’s attention in less distracting situations.

 

It's a process of using classical conditioning to your advantage. I have a podcast episode where I talk about teaching come and drop it using classical conditioning. And, same idea. You want your dog to know that when you say whatever the specific word is, or blow whistle or whatever, that it is worth their while to stop whatever they are doing and to turn their attention to you.

 

So, often with Come, people do this with a whistle, whether it's an actual whistle or just whistling with your lips, because that's a noise that's very specific and could be meaningful. And it's an easy thing to teach because all you need to do is whistle and then drop some great things at your feet.  Drop some treats. And you just need to be really consistent about that. 

 

What's nice about teaching behaviors in this way is, certainly in the beginning, you're really not asking anything of your dog. You're just teaching your dog to make the connection between stuff dropped on the ground. I'm sorry, between the sound and stuff dropped on the ground, stuff that is delicious.

 

And I liken it to — I mean, there are so many, so many things that you can liken it to, but it's kind of like throwing a sale, right? The sale isn't happening because you are going to the store, but the store having the sale makes you go there because you've been conditioned to understand what a sale is.

 

So my suggestion is work on teaching really good recall.  It could also be like a break cue.  At School Yard at School for the Dogs, we teach dogs that, when we say break, that means they need to stop what they're doing and turn their attention to us. 

 

But also, I don't know why your dog is having so many opportunities to hump other male dogs, but certainly as the controller of your dog's social life, you could also limit access to other male dogs unless you're really ready to be practicing that recall or that break. And then work up to situations where your dog is maybe in a dog park or less controlled situations.

 

But wanting to take a step backwards and talk about humping in general.  First of all it's always a problem when we attribute reasons to dog behaviors, it's a slippery slope.  So you know, is your dog humping in order to assert his dominance? That is your explanation of the behavior. We cannot go into your dog's mind and say, “Are you doing this because…?,” see if he's really feeling like he needs to assert his dominance.

 

The fact is humping is a very normal dog behavior, and dogs don't have a huge repertoire of behaviors. What can dogs do? They can wag their tails. They can bark, they can shake. But you know, often in puppy class, I'll explain humping to people as kind of like a nerdy behavior. Like it's one thing dogs know how to do that kind of feels good and feels right.

 

It comes like a baked-in behavior, but it's not necessarily the most suave behavior. Sometimes it can get on other dogs nerves.  It's kind of like a nerdy behavior. It's like a fifth grader at a dance party who just doesn't have a lot of moves yet and is like defaulting always to doing the running man.

 

Dogs can grow out of humping. Sometimes just as they grow out of adolescents, sometimes when they're neutered.  But sometimes they don't, and it just becomes a kind of default behavior in certain situations, often a behavior that is a form of communication or a release of energy.  Kind of a displacement behavior. It doesn't always make sense.

 

That's how you can define or spot a displacement behavior.  Humans engage in displacement behaviors — when you punch a wall.  It doesn't make sense really. You're not angry at the wall. but it is a release of some kind of energy that is going in that direction doing something sort of basic and easy for you.  Same idea with jumping up and down, not a hard thing to do, baked-in behavior for us humans, something we do if maybe we're happy. It doesn't make a lot of sense. 

 

I think humping falls into that category of something that feels good, the dog knows how to do. And given that they don't have a huge repertoire of body vocab. Sometimes it comes out.  My dog used to hump my leg in a few specific situations.  Like at the dog park, when he wanted to leave the dog park, or when I think that's what he wanted, he would sometimes hump my leg. 

 

Why? I dunno. I mean, he could've done any number of things to let me know that he wanted to leave the dog park, but, you know, maybe he didn't want to bark at me. It felt like the wrong thing to do to get attention of others in the dog park. It was a way that he could kind of communicate with me quietly. Maybe it was, I don't know. I can't ask him.  Was he trying to be dominant over my leg? I don't think so. 

 

The other thing is, in play, my dog would sometimes hump other dogs in play.  Always, I found when he was like the third dog.  Dogs tend to play best in twos. And if there were two dogs playing and he was trying to like figure out how to engage, how to work himself in, that would often be a time that I would see him start to hump.

 

And, you know, some dogs really don't mind being humped. I don't think they think it's this weird sexual thing that we seem to think it is always, it's funny to me how embarrassed people get in the dog park when dogs are humping each other. It's like, they have to say, you know, like “Stella, you need to buy him dinner first!” There's always ridiculous things. It's like, the people are talking to their dogs, but they're really talking to each other. 

 

And I think it bothers the humans a lot more than it bothers the dogs. And when he would start to do that, I would just help him get out of that situation, lest another dog interpret it as annoying or uncool, which can happen.  Or more likely a person would get embarrassed, and I just didn't want to have to deal with with their embarrassment.

 

But I don't think it's a dominant behavior because I've seen dogs hump and then go ahead and ask to be chased, or lick another dog's lips, or roll onto their back. There's lots of things dogs do in play that might be considered dominant, but then the next moment they're doing something that might be considered submissive. And so I just think it's always wise to be cautious about attributing things to dominance.

 

That is my little spiel on dog humping.  You know, another way I think of it is — and you know, I don't have a PhD in this stuff. I know a lot from having watched many dogs do many things, and you know, the study of ethnology is so interesting. It's like why dogs do what they do in order to to take in enough calories to survive and to procreate. Like ethology is kind of, as I see it, like the study of survival and procreation.

 

And I've always thought of humping as like nature's way of hedging bets.  Like probably humping this laundry bag is not gonna end up producing puppies and bringing my unique genetic makeup to a new generation of puppies.  But maybe?  Like when in doubt try humping something, it could work.

 

I wonder if dogs are kind of operating in that way, or like some there's something in the makeup that is helping the dog practice this thing that could really help them extend their DNA to another generation. And it feels good.

 

My father had a cat that would hump a pillow.  He would hump anything.  He would hump anything he could find.  He was notorious for stealing towels. Like, if I took a shower and then had my towel on the bed for like a minute after I took the shower, he would steal the towel and bring it into the closet and roll it into kind of like a little burrito and hump the hell out of that towel.

And he would like store towels in the closet. My dad would call it his harem. 

 

He also has a pillow that he would hump, that my dad's sewed two eyes and nose and a mouth on. So it looked kind of like a cat in the end. And my dad who was a funny guy, would call out like, Oh, look, he's doing a 69!  With a pillow.

 

Something worth noting about humping is dogs who don't like to be humped are often very good at just sort of saying in a subtle way to the other dog, like, Hey, I don't like that. Leave me alone. And, not to get too you know political let's say, but it has struck me that part of what's complicated about when in human behavior, when people are inappropriate with each other in any way that might be sexual — again, like sexuality, sexual behaviors, baked into all of us.  And certainly, the desire to procreate is deep in all of us.

 

But I think the problem is that we humans are not necessarily as good at being like, “Hey, leave me the fuck alone. I don't like how you're behaving right now.” It's really hard. It's scary. It's difficult. I mean, especially as a woman, when you're faced with a man who's being inappropriate. I mean, fortunately most of the time men aren’t humping us, but whatever they're doing.

 

If there is a larger lesson and dog humping maybe that is one of them. We can learn from dogs who don't like to be humped. We can learn how they are nicely able to communicate with one another when they do not like it.

 

Alright. Those are my thoughts on this topic. A daughter of a friend of mine, when her dog humps things, she calls it twerking, which I think it's funny. And it's kind of like working right. Human humans do it too. We are just as weird.  And I don't think we're, you know, twerking is not about dominance. At least I, I don't think it is, but again, I encourage people to not try and mind read their dogs too much because we can't read each other's minds. So we shouldn't give ourselves credit for being able to read the minds of individuals in another species.