Humping People

[Casso 1,261]

Well, as funny as it sounds, im now getting sick of this.

 

Jerry-Lee humps people including myself. I will try and put it as clearly as possible.

He will mount me if:

 

1. I run - so im taking this as it gets him excited

2. If i stoke him behind his ears

3. Sometimes when im just standing still

4. Playing with him

 

and 5. if you crouch or bend down

 

Now, he has since learned not to do it to me, or he will get told off, so he has eased up on it. But he still does it to other people. Im concerned as he is massive - when on his back legs he is taller than me and very very heavy. I cant barely get him of me when he mounts and gets a grip of me.

Im worried he might do it to kid or something - he never gets off the lead unless in a safe place where there is no one around, but im still worried. He is in no way a bad dog, he has never bitten any body or any dog, i cant ever remember hearing him growling nastily. He is just a big playful dog that is horny I can get him to stop it, but i want to know whats causing it. O and just to add he has never tried to hump any other dog - just people.

Could it be -

 

a. being dominant??

b. just playing??

your not far off the point mo chara when you say he does it when excited and thats the key he needs to be channeled into a form of connection thats social,

 

when energy is flowing eg, when he is running after you things are in motion its great but its when the energy stops , no motion that the dog is stuck with energy infesting his body in other words, thats when the problem erupts , its still a form of connection the mounting is not dominance, the dog has no dominant intentions what so ever,

 

its a distorted form of connection when energy is not flowing, pups will even do it in the nest area, watch two pups playing even when they are still on the bitch and one stops playing with the other after getting bitten too hard and bites hard in return the motion stops the energy stops, one will mount the other, its still a form of connection one is still stuck with energy but orally it has been disciplined, its all a form of connection,

 

the dogs sounds really social but has a distorted connection somehow hot wired into that action , thats all it is

 

has he been disciplined for mouthing as a pup, ?? get him on a tug item as a form of connection with you , get him expressing orally if ya get my drift ,

 

think less pack, which is instinctive and a way of storing stress, and more group thinking which is a way of releasing energy in a social manner, he just needs to be shown how to make a connection with you first in a socially canine manner orally(think of two dogs playing) and the anti social behavior with other folk should cease,

 

you know yourself its not dominance, its a connection thats gone a bit arse ways excuse the pun,,

 

good luck with him,

 

just to add,

the more we interpret canine behavior through dominance tainted outlooks the more injustices the most social animal ever sent to serve mankind have to suffer and the more shelters will fill,

give him the answer of what to do with his energy before he starts asking the questions,

Edited August 7, 2012 by Casso

[MoChara 1,632]

Well, the last two answers for me hit the nail on the head, very informative - Thank you. I will follow on with all of the points made. And i will let you's all know how i get on.............. hopefully without Jerry - Lee on top of anyone

 

Thanks again,

Nicole.

[skycat 6,173]

Casso: part of me understands this and knows you are right in what you say, but there is still the question of exactly how to get rid of the unwanted behaviour. Simply by engaging the dog properly, I can't see how the dog is going to learn not to hump people. Surely there has to be a negative response to the dog's behaviour? Sure you can distract the dog with tug toys, games etc, but can you explain exactly, in a step-by-step fashion, what to do when the dog rushes up to someone and tries to hump them?

The theory is all very well, but practical advice would be great: please!

[Casso 1,261]

Casso: part of me understands this and knows you are right in what you say, but there is still the question of exactly how to get rid of the unwanted behaviour. Simply by engaging the dog properly, I can't see how the dog is going to learn not to hump people. Surely there has to be a negative response to the dog's behaviour? Sure you can distract the dog with tug toys, games etc, but can you explain exactly, in a step-by-step fashion, what to do when the dog rushes up to someone and tries to hump them?

The theory is all very well, but practical advice would be great: please!

hi Penny , im only going to put down a few lines til later im up to my ears here

 

my main point of responding on this thread was to try to clear up for my friend the reason for the behavior in the dog and to try to prevent others from misreading a action and disciplining a dog for making a confused connection, the dog was clearly a very social animal just misguided,

 

we dont interpret a scratch or bite from a cat, a peck from a parrot , or ever a kick from a horse, as dominant behavior, but as soon as a dog steps over the line in any form we label him as having intentions to take over the house , rule the roost and dominant all and sundry ,

 

is that really all dogs want to do, in all your years of working dogs do you believe thats the goal of every mutt or can they live socially when allowed to express normal canine behavior ,,

[lukey 1,621]

[skycat 6,173]

Thanks Casso, but what I want to discuss is the notion that all negative reinforcement is a no-no in dog training. Surely if one dog can 'tell off' another for inappropriate behaviour, we can do the same? I'm not disputing that this particular dog is just behaving displaying normal canine behaviour given that you know it has its wires crossed somewhere, but how would you personally stop this behaviour?

[Casso 1,261]

Thanks Casso, but what I want to discuss is the notion that all negative reinforcement is a no-no in dog training. Surely if one dog can 'tell off' another for inappropriate behaviour, we can do the same? I'm not disputing that this particular dog is just behaving displaying normal canine behaviour given that you know it has its wires crossed somewhere, but how would you personally stop this behaviour?

i understand what your saying penny and it all makes perfect sense to us to discipline a dog, but for a instruction or command to be fully understood the receiver of the discipline must fully understand the others reasoning for it, we find it hard enough to understand human reason how hard do you think it is for a dog,

For a dog there are so many other factors which are taken in , mindset of both dog and owner at the time, owner, grass or concrete, location, tension felt inside( hungry or not), weather, time of day the list is endless, dogs find it very very difficult to conceptualize and usually take a chunk of everything or nothing depending on temperament, sensitive dogs will include owner as one of the negatives, hard dogs less so

i dont bollok the dog , because i dont take it personally, its a situation to over come and learn from,

 

i have had dogs who displayed mounting in the past , it was always at the end of play when action had stopped, in this case i would get the action on cue, getting the dog to hup up putting his paws on my chest as a prelude to a training routine, once he grasped that hup meant putting his on my chest i would teach him the down for play to start and interaction to begin , eventually just getting the down as the best use in the dogs mind for his energy, meaning the down makes things happen,

 

once you get a action on cue it is less likely to happen in other mindsets, if a technique is learned in a drive frame of mind, it stays within those boundaries,

 

its like teaching a dog to bark as a way of getting him to understand a different command to stop barking , or training a command to get on the sofa to train a command for getting off the sofa , if you train to get up you can train to get off, same difference, but without the misunderstood bollocking,

 

its the same when someone rings the door bell and the dog goes ape shit, if every time the door bell rang you threw a ball for the dog or fed him as in Pavlov.s experiment you can change his behavior no doubt,

 

but its not really the step by step issue i,m interested in , its why a dog does what he does if you understand that you can work with any dogs issues because all they want to do is express natural canine behavior from the hardest game dog down to the smallest lap dog , their temperaments all fall on a graph from predator like to prey like , predator exploders prey imploders , behavior all falls along that graph too , its how we interpret it thereafter that the problems rise, i dont do pack, i dont do dominance, every dog is born social it is there for every one to see in every litter, work with the energy not against it , channel it, and the mutt will of its own accord make itself compliant to fall into line,

 

we make ourselves predator like to the dog through discipline and aggression, likewise to fit in the dog becomes prey like , we then have a situation where we have a mutt functioning on instinct which is fear( fight or flight depending on temperament) which in turn is untrainable, tunes us out because it cant express its energy with us , in other words the cat will always have energy to play with the mouse but you wont see a mouse turning up to play with a cat , a cat is too predator like and a mouse too prey like and thats the way mother nature works

 

the more confident and natural a dog is with us the more energy he will give us the more control we have and the less distorted his drive will be, if i was to believe in all the pack and dominance crap especially from one little Mexican you cant tune into what is really going on with the dog, letting dogs express their natural inclinations through me leave's a very social easy going no issues hound, problems arise when natural behavior gets curtailed,

 

i wish i could fly through this and put down all that should be put down on this topic but im crap at this and type with one finger, dont know if that covers anything or answers anything but one thing i firmly believe is every dog is born social, its what happens between the time they leave the bitch at 8 weeks til their temperament finally settles at 2/3 years old that fecks them up,,

,

Edited August 7, 2012 by Casso

[skycat 6,173]

Brilliantly put :thumbs: BTW: all that is even more brilliant with only one finger

 

But how does one 'teach' people to recognise what is normal canine behaviour and get out of the 'me say-you do' mindset?

 

Another thing: say a wild canine pack is off hunting.............they are a loose bunch, they don't all follow in line, and there will be outfliers, those who are scouting off to either side of the main body of animals and those who are loosely in a group. Then say I'm walking along a lane, and my dogs are working in the same way: scouts and hunters in the cover, 'goalies' in the open waiting for a bolt, but now I have to get my dogs tight in behind me when another dog comes along with or without its owner in sight. I need my dogs to walk tight to me and ignore this other dog: natural canine behaviour will tell my dogs that they should either act slightly wary/aggressive with this 'intruder' on 'their' patch; and naturally enough they want to go and investigate this stranger, or simply introduce themselves using the correct dog body language, but I can't allow that to happen, as so many dogs don't know how to behave normally in this sort of situation, so I have to go against their natural instincts and tell them to stay close to me and ignore the stranger.

 

You say you 'don't do' the pack thing, but surely in cases like this there has to be a single boss that the dogs will obey in any situation? Sure, I see some enlightened people with one dog which sits the moment it sees another dog, waiting for its reward, and I could no doubt do the same with several, providing I take a bag of 'treats' along during every walk I go on, but that isn't always practical when you are hunting. Of course I realise that the whole conditioning thing works with or without treats once the dog knows what it has to do, but can you honestly see most lurcher owners having the patience to achieve this level of conditioning given that most dog owners, of any breed or type, are not necessarily of the 'teacher' mindset?

 

I know that it sounds as though I'm nit picking, and maybe I am, but it is so interesting hearing different view points on all this sort of stuff and I hope that people reading this will start to ask questions of themselves and the way they train their dogs.

 

Also, how do you prevent a dog running after the prey that you normally expect it to chase and kill if the situation isn't right, or safe? In some of these very highly driven lurchers no amount of conditioning or food treats is going to overcome the stimulus of seeing that prey running in front of it maybe only yards away.

 

Bear in mind too that certain lurchers have been bred for drive, drive and more drive, without necessarily trying to breed in that biddable temperament we see in GSDs, for example.

[Casso 1,261]

sometimes we just have to manage our dogs out in public by whatever means, owners get scared when they see a lot of dogs heading there way and at the same time panic their own mutt, dogs will get themselves into all sorts of situations if we let them and the reason for this is because they are attracted to everything they have such a social apatite,

they can be their own worst enemy at times , couple of dogs is not so bad but when you get over 4 together the pack mentally take over and i could see it hard to regain control especially if you have a young teenage dog with a interest in everything, its easy to see that action needs to be taken quickly, dogs will quickly understand what you want without harm done,

 

when i mention natural behavior i mean the behavior programmed into pups , here again management is the key , to express itself in a safe environment, not the house for me,

 

the single most biggest factor for any pup from a owners point of view is that a pup is compelled that is totally driven to mouth something anything when stimulated, excited, nervous, interested or hungry, and its this one point that brings every pup into conflict with us, the pup is not thinking its not dominance its hardwired into its very being ,

this natural canine behavior needs to be understood for what it is , it vital that we dont confront but manage, it wont mouth for ever it just needs to get it out of its system

 

oral drives in pups are very similar to sexual drives in humans, where a strange experience sexually at a certain age can lead to sexual dis function in the grown adult, adult dogs can also display disfunctional behavior later in life if wrongly confronted as a pup for the oral inclination towards us in particular seemly out of know where( tension in tension out ) but may only become evident when the temperament settles at 2/3 years as you know but the seeds were sown much earlier,

 

sexual disfunction is hugely evident on this site both human and canine

having said that, i wont overly stimulate a pup and never in the house, let him out of its crate or kennel , let him run round burn off energy, pee whatever and when i feel he settled down a bit and not hyper i interact,,

the thing is if i interact while stimulated, the pup feels how it felt inside is what makes the interaction happen, so for things to happen he must be hyper in his mind and when he's hyper he needs to mouth and it just goes round in circles, in the same way a dog is hyper before he leaves the house, thats what he feels opens the door for him

 

so calm is better with a pup, when he's a little older walks keeping him focused on us

 

sometimes there comes a stage in a human canine relationship especially a working one where the dog feels what we feel because the dog has tuned us in, we are his world and has made himself social to fit with us not because he's afraid of us through dominance or as pack leader but because he wants to fit, when we feel good he feels good and when we dont want him to do something he dont want to do it, thats the stage i want with the mutt , he is open to me and relaxed, never need to raise my voice , the dog has tuned me in , this is a state that every dog wants and i sure every owner wants too, the easiest way is to let the dog express himself with us through hunting , mooching, ferreting whatever it is as hunters we are the avenue to the dog's drive and we get credit from the dog for that

 

Penny, im not sure what Joe the average lurcher owner wants from his dog maybe just to kill stuff and nothing else but there are the newer owners who now have working dogs in the house as pets who are been told to dominate and be pack leader ,( its the pack leader thing i have the problem with not the pack as such) this advice is directed towards normal pet dog owners but normal pet owners are people who walk the mutt maybe once a week feed and clean up shite, thats as far as the relationship goes, so what im saying is that if you want to get the best from a working dog who hopefully will want to listen and be relaxed with you, you dont need to dominate over every little infringement because the relationship is more important than that ,

 

some running dogs especially collie bred animals fall into line without much bother and can tune us in easier, others take offence when confronted and with no history of taking instruction , they tune us out,

 

pet dog owners are NOT the dogs avenue to harmony or drive , so a pet has to find his own way of expressing himself , chasing cars, pulling curtains down , shredding the sofa, developing confrontations to release energy with owners especially, the answer to all this is drive , work the dog, all those infringements are just natural behavior with no avenue of expression the mutt is not trying to take over the house, he f**king confused, million years of hard wired behavior stuck in a three bedroom house, shit happens,

 

so if we get hung up on hanging up the dog as the mexican does we can't see whats really going on with the dog if the mutt is guarding a shoe or a sock in the house and has a fixed look in his eye, is he trying to be the boss or just trying to work out issues in himself because emotion in equals emotion out , any item can take on a form for an emotional outburst , dogs are drawn to emotional outbursts as a way of resolving tension in themselves, same as humans, so any item often food become the" it " for expression it clears the tension , just the same as a good row for humans it clears the air and resolves tension, what goes in must come out , tension works its own way out,

my finger is done, best of luck

[MoChara 1,632]

Thanks again Casso and skycat..

 

Pity this thread has the topic title "humping".

 

As there is more information on it on other aspects other than a humping problem, which i think other people should take notice of. You's are both very informative with answers and very knowledgeable in this subject, and others.

 

Nicole.

[whippet 99 2,613]

Thanks again Casso and skycat..

 

Pity this thread has the topic title "humping".

 

As there is more information on it on other aspects other than a humping problem, which i think other people should take notice of. You's are both very informative with answers and very knowledgeable in this subject, and others.

 

Nicole.

jesus i didnt know humping could be so ..................complicated

[skycat 6,173]

Cheers John: I quite understand what you are saying: I was just trying to pin you down to offering some practical advice for those that need it. Take the mouthing thing for example: I never stop pups mouthing my hands as long as they are gentle. Quite often my young dog will hold my hand in his jaws as he follows me down the garden; this is fine by me because I understand that he is so desperate to do something with himself: at one time he ragged the other dogs' necks every time they moved, but he's gradually learned that neither they nor I like this. Now, at 16 months old, he is learning to use other things as a substitute, but he's always very gentle when he takes my hand in his mouth. He's also really benefited from tug training as he is so driven and highly excitable. One of the best things about tug play I've found is that it teaches the dog to control itself: waiting for the command to grab the tug is great self discipline.

 

Take one of my terriers for example: she is so hyped up just before we go out that she has to grab something: she learned early on that it doesn't do to grab another dog, so she's taught herself to pick up anything she finds lying on the ground as we walk to the van: that way she satisfies her need to grab without getting in trouble with the other dogs: mind you, the things she picks up and carries into the van occasionally cause a problem: like a really big lump of tree branch, or my wellie I've left outside the back door

 

I also deliberately put my hand in a pup's mouth, holding its bottom or top jaw gently: its how I teach them to be gentle and not bite hard. Each time they bite hard I yelp and move away, but I like to play lots of physical contact games with my pups so they learn how to play properly with thin skinned human hands.

 

When I see the highly ritualised actions that the dogs perform when play fighting with each other, it is easy to see how the learn how to interact safely and within the boundaries of polite canine behaviour: the sparring, withdrawal, the stalk, the pounce, the hind leg grab, but woe betide the dog that grabs too hard. If this happens they can expect a snap and a 'walk away' by the 'injured' party, though no blood will have been drawn. But that overstepping the mark signals the end of the game, and the offender respects that, and if they don't, they soon learn because the other dog will snap them off again hard if they try to play again too soon.

 

I just follow similar patterns to my adult dogs who are teaching a pup how to mind its manners, but they also know that a grab in a state of high excitement, like just before we are about to go out on exercise, has no intent to hurt or climb the social ladder. They are tolerant as long as it doesn't hurt too much, and also because they are wound up a bit too. All that grabbing and jostling is like a wolf pack before the hunt, strengthening the bonds and getting the adrenalin going.

 

This is why I will always continue to think 'pack', because that social creature, as you so rightly say Casso, is what makes our dogs behave in the way they do. That's the way I see it at any rate.

[mintstick999 485]

Absolutely fascinating reading both your thoughts (Penny & Casso) on how you see your dogs, and how you live your day to day lives with them Sorry MoCarha if this has become slightly sidetracked from your original thread but i've personally found both comments from both parties,......... extremely interesting..... :thumbs:

[MoChara 1,632]

Absolutely fascinating reading both your thoughts (Penny & Casso) on how you see your dogs, and how you live your day to day lives with them Sorry MoCarha if this has become slightly sidetracked from your original thread but i've personally found both comments from both parties,......... extremely interesting..... :thumbs:

Yes Mintstick, very well said, i am glad i put this topic up. I didnt just get information about the original problem, but ive now came away with alot more views and knowledge on different things. Two very talented knowledgeable people.

[littlefish 586]

Some very interesting reading on this thread. MoChara - how do your dogs live .....in or out? If my dog were doing that, I would suggest spending one-to -one time with it for a few minutes several times a day, reinforcing basic commands and manners to encourage it to respect you more - probably done in the form of a game - when he gets to play tug with a toy for responding to your clear and consistent commands. Keep it upbeat and positive, rather than feeling you are dominating the dog into submission. Also, I would make sure it is not allowed on the furniture etc.