You have seen tons of reality videos showing people in various stages of public humiliation. And the most shameful of these is a dog humping somebody’s pants.
There’s nothing shameful about the act per se– it’s the act of doing it in public.
Why do dogs hump anything
Some curious theories why dogs hump are:
1. Power trip. You can’t think of humping without thinking of sex. To dogs, as in humans, humping is a sexual and political gesture. When your dog humps a flower pot, it’s his way of proving his authority—at least over the poor flower pot. Your dog thinks the same when it humps your pants, legs, or shoes. It’s weird but like us, dogs wish of leading an entire pack. These wannabes who prove too weak to turn things around express their wish through humping. They get a good feeling from it in the same way humans get from masturbation.
You see, in a pack of dogs, the one that has the most sexual prowess is looked up to as the official inseminator. On closer inspection, this wish is not only confined to dog issues: We are all designed in the same manner– sexual behavior and power are mutually exclusive.
When a dog is in heat, a brain chemical called serotonin goes berserk. This causes the sexually aggressive behavior in your dog. So when it gets out of hand, your dog lets off steam at anything close by.
2. Sex trip. When your dog has a low sex life or is leading a life of seclusion, humping is the equivalent of masturbation. Pardon the language, but at times humping brings your dog to wild spurts. For neuter dogs, it’s just the sexual organs that disappear but the memory of the act stimulates with the same intensity and passion.
Neutering your dog doesn’t solve the issue. It takes time for a neutered dog to accept that his organ is gone. In an experiment conducted by dog experts, they mixed intact dogs and neutered dogs to see what happens. Even after years of surgery, neutered dogs mounted intact dogs! They proved capable of doing the whole act like nothing’s missing.
As in human sexuality, the most aggressive dogs are those with their sexual organs intact. On some rare occasions, even neutered and female dogs hump things, too. According to experts dogs get stimulated easily by thoughts of sex.
How can you prevent your dug from humping
While this may work in due time, this is never a guarantee. Dogs will be dogs.
1. Neutering. As stated above even neutering cannot assure you that humping stops. But neutering male dogs may lessen their testosterone level by as much as 60%. Some dogs realize they’re missing something fast, while others remain unaffected at all.
2. Training. The most you can do with this is to eliminate humping in public (your dog returns to it if he’s left to his own devices) There are dog-master interaction programs to help you go through with the process in which you’re taught to tell your dog to work hard for something he wants to get. The message this sends to your dog is, “You shouldn’t hump me in public because it’s grossly humiliating.” So the next time your dog feels the urge, it humps another thing instead.
Patient training brings positive results. It’s not that you’re erasing sexual drive from your dog’s mind. You’re simply teaching it respect. After all, great sex requires respect.
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