Dog Training in New York City: How to Keep Your Dog From Humping
Humping: A Sign of Dominance or a Symptom of Frustration?
In 2013 blog article at PsychologyToday.com, Dr. Stanley Coren, a highly esteemed scientist and well-known expert on dogs, gives us his view of why dogs hump. He says the behavior has nothing to do with sex; it's all about showing dominance. Since dogs don't just mount humans and other dogs, but will also hump their toys, pillows, and blankets—even a family cat or rabbit—it seems very unlikely that this behavior is about social dominance. So what's this behavior really about? How Dogs See the World
It's about a blocked feeling of attraction: the dog feels an attraction to a person, animal, or object, but for some reason he can't express it in a normal way, i.e.., through mouthing, biting, or playing. When the frustration reaches a certain level, the humping begins. Mounting another dog from behind is a behavior often seen when dogs play (see Bekoff and Byers 1981 and Fagen 1981). And it seems to happen most often when one dog is frustrated that he can't get another dog to play with him. In such cases, the first dog may start humping his potential play partner just to instigate a round of "chase me." For anyone with the propensity to see dominance where none exists, this could be interpreted as an intention to dominate the other dog by forcing it to play. Yet I've seen numerous dogs, who seemed desperate to get a non-compliant partner to play with them, who've tried humping that dog, gave up, tried again, then rolled over on their backs in a "submissive" posture. The only constant was not the first dog's alpha status or his dominant personality (otherwise why would the dogs have started acting submissive?). It was simply that the dogs had a strong feeling of social attraction for the other dog which, in turn, engendered a desire to play with that dog, and the energy behind that desire had nowhere else to go. Dr. Coren rightly says that the tendency to hump another dog is seen in a litter of puppies[1], though he reports this to reinforce the idea that humping is not a sexual behavior; a puppy's sexual development is several months away. But development of the pup's hunting skills—the chase, the eye-stalk, the grab-bite, the kill-bite (shaking the head around while holding a prey object in the mouth)—is also several months away, in fact they're even further away. Yet they're clearly seen in puppy play too.
New Research Reveals Flaws in Dominance Theory
To start with, the idea of social dominance is no longer valid. It's based on the neo-Darwinian idea that all animals are in competition with one another over resources, and that, generally speaking, those who control those resources are more likely to pass on their genes to the next generation. In fact, the reverse is true. In a baboon troop, studied by Robert Sapolsky, a gang of "dominant" male baboons made life miserable for the rest of the troop. Then, one day, the troop found free food at a garbage dump and ate their fill. What they didn't know was that the food was infected with tuberculosis. And guess what happened? All the baboons got sick, but only the most "dominant" members died. And a year later, the troop had self-organized in such a way that any member who acted dominant toward others was shunned and sent packing.
The truth is that acting dominant is not normal and natural. In fact, it turns out that evolution will punish you if you're selfish and mean. All that aside, let's say, for a moment, that dominance, as a behavioral tendency, does exist. The current definition is that it's about controlling access to important resources. In what way does humping another pup get the supposed dominant pup a better feeding or sleeping spot, or better access to anything else of any value? If a puppy wants to control access to valuable resources, like food or toys, he'll growl or bark or try to get in the other dog's way to prevent access. If dominance does exist in dogs, it would only take place in relation to pushing another puppy out of the way of his mother's milk, etc., not mounting him or her from behind. Dr. Coren also notes that humping is about showing leadership. But in what way, and in what possible context, does it show leadership? If I'm a dog and one my homies is always mounting me from behind, I'm going to do everything I can to avoid contact with that dog. I'm certainly not going to follow him anywhere. Scientific Explanations for Behavior Should Follow Three Rules
In his book, The Intelligence of Dogs, Coren tells us that scientific explanations of animal behavior are supposed to follow three simple rules: Ockham's razor, Morgan's canon, and the law against anthrophomorphism (ascribing human-like qualities to animal behavior). If the simplest explanation is usually the best and the most scientific, then we should reject the idea that humping is about exerting dominance, because it would require that dogs and wolves have the ability to make comparisons and engage in conceptual thinking: much higher levels of awareness than they're capable of. If we say, instead, that the behavior is caused by a frustration of an animal's desire to connect to something he feels an attraction for, then I think we're much closer to the truth. Of course humping can't just be about feeling frustrated because another dog won't play. That might explain what happens in the dog park, but not why a dog humps the mailman's leg, or his own toys or blankie. I think this behavior comes from the way canines sublimate their urge to bite each other to ensure group harmony.
What do I mean, exactly? It's unusual for predators to form social groups because without something to damper their natural aggression they might use their feelings of aggression by attacking one another. This is the primary reason most predator species don't live together in close-knit groups. But in order for wolves to successfully hunt large prey, they need to live in harmony, and they need to form packs. And in order for the pack to be stable, wolves have to exert control over their urge to bite one another. That's why in some wolf packs you see a lot of "submissive" licking, or lip-curling and teeth flashing. But, put in context, the most common behaviors in wolf packs are a) affiliative behaviors (cuddling, licking one another's fur, playing), followed by b) group hunting behaviors, followed by c) "dominance" displays, which are much rarer than the other two.
So in order to keep pack harmony, the wolf's urge to bite other wolves has to sublimated into pro-social behaviors. And once humans started domesticating dogs, the animals who exerted the most impulse control over their urge to bite were the most successful at living long enough to pass on their genes to the next generation. And this tendency slowly became encoded into a dog's DNA.
And I believe this ability to sublimate the urge to bite—partially genetic, partially conditioned in the litter—is the primary mechanism behind all canine social behavior. It's not about domination, it's about sublimation. The Drive to Connect
There's a broader way of looking at this. Sodium and chlorine atoms have an interesting structure that enables them to connect to one another, creating sodium chloride (salt), NaCl. The same goes for hydrogen and oxygen: H2O. A plant sends its roots down to the soil seeking nutrients, its leaves up to catch the sun's rays. Jellyfish, who have no nervous system, are still somehow able to seek out and kill their prey. Without a mechanism for each aspect of nature—atoms, molecules, jellyfish, wolf packs—to be able to make connections to other parts of the natural world, there would be no natural world. Everything has to connect to something else for it all to work. [2] Wolves are designed to connect to their prey through their teeth and jaws. Puppies show an urge to connect to almost everything they encounter through their teeth and jaws. This is an incredibly strong urge that takes place during a very specific window of time. And when that urge is stifled or repressed by the pup's owners, it can wreak havoc on the pup's ability to form normal social relationships with people and with other dogs. The urge to bite is a strong one, and it has to be given some kind of outlet or else neurotic behaviors of one kind or another will surface. This is as predictable as the fact that water runs downstream. In his article, Dr. Coren says that humping should not be permitted. It should be stopped to maintain the pack hierarchy. It's true that humping should not be allowed, encouraged, or tolerated. But if the urge to hump comes not from the urge to dominate, but from unresolved issues that took place during a puppy's oral development phase, then what is the best way to prevent a dog from engaging in this disagreeable behavior? To dominate him? I don't think so. Just give the dog a safe means of satisfying his urge to bite/connect. This may sound strange, but it's absolutely true. And it can be verified quite easily. The Truth About Humping
Several years ago I got a call from a family who'd just adopted a rescue puppy named Tippy, who was about 7 months old, and they were having behavioral problems with him. Tippy greeted me at the door, in a fairly normal way—making friendly eye contact and jumping up to say hello. We went into the kitchen and sat down at the table to discuss what was going on, and Tippy began panting and pacing the floor, occasionally coming over to mount my leg for brief spurts. I ignored him, using the theory that any behavior which isn't being reinforced will eventually extinguish itself.
This theory had no effect on Tippy's behavior. I talked with the family for about twenty minutes and yet the dog still hadn't stopped pacing the floor, panting, and coming over occasionally to mount my leg. I finally realized that Tippy needed my help to calm down. So the next time he came over, but before he could start mounting my leg, I scratched his cheek with one hand, and put two fingers of the other into his mouth, encouraging him to nibble on them. (Don't try this yourself unless you're 100% sure the dog won't actually bite!) He bit down very gently and I softly praised him for doing so, petting him the whole time. After a while he got tired of chewing on my hand and went under the table to lie down and almost immediately fell asleep, calm at last. As I walked home I thought about Tippy's reasons for humping me. He seemed more frustrated than dominant. But why was he frustrated? It struck me that, like all dogs, Tippy had a strong desire to make social contact—a strong desire to connect—but had to do so in a way that would also satisfy his urge to bite (i.e., by bringing me a toy). But the normal social development of this pup had, in all likelihood, been repressed by his previous owners during his oral development phase. (Remember, puppies are designed by Nature to connect to their environment primarily through their teeth and jaws.) This is why Tippy finally stopped humping my leg after I let him chew on my fingers for about 30 seconds. In fact, he not only stopped humping, he calmed down completely, and went to sleep. The act of mouthing my hand satisfied his need to connect. Once that need had been satisfied, the humping behavior disappeared, at least temporarily. I see only one possible explanation. I said earlier that my hypothesis about the underlying cause of a dog's humping behavior is easily verifiable, and it is: if a dog has a humping problem, and you give him an outlet for his urge to bite the need to hump should go away, as if on its own. What I think is most interesting about this story is that I successfully controlled the dog's behavior (that is, I "dominated" him) by simply allowing him to chew on my fingers for about 30 seconds. And he never tried to hump me again.
LCK
“Life Is an Adventure—Where Will Your Dog Take You?” Footnotes: 1) One might be tempted to think of a litter of puppies as being essentially like a pack, except for the fact that, as Ray Coppinger says, pack formation in canids is a function of prey size. Dogs don't hunt large prey so they don't form packs. And without a pack there can be no pack hierarchy. 2) Sigmund Freud hypothesized that this need to connect eventually evolved into the sex drive. "Even though it is certain that sexuality and the distinction between the sexes did not exist before life began, the possibility remains that the instincts which were later to described as sexual may have been in operation from the very first." ("Beyond the Pleasure Principle," The Freud Reader, p. 615). If this is true then Dr. Coren may be off-base when he says that humping is not a sexual behavior. It could very well be a displacement of normal sexual energy
