Here is an excellent essay about humping in dogs, which cites several studies. It discusses the belief that all humping is driven by dominance. http://thebark.com/content/hmping Here is an excerpt:
My dog Obi (desexed), who is a great big wuss and not in the slightest bit interested in 'domination', occasionally meets the odd dog (invariably a desexed male or female) who he is absolutely desperate to play with, follow around and hump. It's simply based on a desire to start a party with a dog who he thinks is his new best friend. Dominance and status have nothing to do with it.
I've been training top class dogs for 30 years winning every type of competition and training and working with all breeds of dogs successfully I've seen this behaviour 100s of times I don't need to read an article on this when I have myself written articles etc that have been published and acknowledged
That's sad that you have closed yourself off from the possibility to learn something new. Everyone should question their beliefs from time to time.
Not at all. Zaba is a BIG softy. Bruce can take his and Tatze's bones, sit on two and eat his own while they stand by not knowing what to do. We went for a free run today and Zaba avoided a snarly dog, he's not one for any kind of dominance and rolls over on his back rather than growling or drawing himself up in height when meeting aggressive dogs. Both Gypsy and Twiglet would do the same (if I let them!). The reason for this was that they are more intelligent than Zaba and Tatze and could outmanoeuvre them. Bruce has a clever way of distracting them, gathering the bones, then sitting on two bones and eating one. No, I don't allow it, it's bad manners - but there's no dominance going on, at all. Zaba's behaviour yesterday was highly sexual. I know the difference between that and the ordinary humping they do in play. ..
That's interesting, we have an older neutered dog here...who does hump the younger male entire dog...not often though. What other behaviours/traits would I be looking for which would indicate dominance? We also have a young unspayed bitch, but he has only humped her once, I actually think that was by mistake as he looked a bit confused and let go almost instantly.
A lot of owners think this is play and laugh at it finding it funny but to dog it's one way of showing dominance, other ways are aggressive behaviour hogging the food bowl, going from food bowl to food bowl pushing the others out so to get the best bits if you watch them it all becomes clear.if they were wild and made a kill as lions etc the most dominant gets the best spoils then it's passed on down in rank to the youngest and weakest make do with what's left
Ah OK...so am I understanding that resource guarding is a trait of dominance? I haven't seen that written anywhere? Lions do have a very different social structure to canids, somewhat based on the needs for survival, however more so the need for genetic diversity within the pride. I don't think we can extrapolate comparisons between the two in terms of pack behaviour.
It's not scientific understanding it's evolution how they've evolved become domesticated certain traits never leave them it's nature only the strong survive the top males have the pick of the females they have to form a pack order and they do it in various ways
Bit of track here it seems! I was more interested in the concept of resource guarding as a dominant trait. We all know that evolution isn't about "only the strong survive" however, more about a species adaptability to survive.
Seriously if a disease hit mankind and wiped us all out what do you think would happen to your dogs they would either starve to death or form packs and hunt to survive ,but they would still have a pack order one being the most dominant
I would if I knew how to work this thing properly tried down loading pictures for this site totally messed it up I will get my daughter when she comes to do it hope you enjoy reading them
I don't laugh at humping - I discourage it by distracting the dogs - thus preventing a habit forming, this is whether they are humping cushions or each other. On this occasion nothing would distract Zaba, which alerted me to the idea that he was getting the wrong signals from Bruce, somehow - probably chemical as several people suggested. Changing the smells by giving both dogs a good clean up with urine cleaner has done the trick, thankfully! There has been no humping of anybody by anybody else today ...
You do realise that wild wolves don't "form" packs, don't you? You do realise that the concept of an "alpha" dog has been discredited? Maybe not, because you don't seem to have any interest in keeping up with current research, so are apparently basing your beliefs on a 1947 study by Dr Schenkel which was based entirely on captive wolves, that had been thrown together into a completely unnatural group. Here is another article, this time by the late, great, Dr Sophia Yin: https://drsophiayin.com/philosophy/dominance/ And an article that describes why what we used to believe about wolves is wrong: http://io9.gizmodo.com/why-everything-you-know-about-wolf-packs-is-wrong-502754629
