Hi, So we've been together for almost a week now. Everything is going quite well. He's never been noisy in the night, but we've needed some "click for quiet" when preparing his food ration as he started going crazy in his crate while I was prepping his food. he's getting calmer and calmer with each feeding now. He did start humping my hand a couple days ago. It was probably caused by over-excitement. And he's humped me at-least once a day after the first time. I've ended all play and placed him in his crate each time. It usually takes him about 30sec to fall asleep after a humping incident. Am I getting him too tired? Should I try and limit his play-time a bit more? Is giving him a time-out in the crate the right thing to indicate that humping isn't a fun activity? Our routine is quite simple most of the time. Wake up ~7-8. He is very playful for an hour. He also gets his breakfast during this time. After that he goes to sleep again and wakes up after a while. We then go outside to potty and play for 10-20min. He goes back to his crate after playtime and depending on whether he falls asleep or not we go outside again in 10-20min. This is repeated throughout the day and his sleeping pauses become longer and longer until ~10-11pm when he goes down for the night.
Welcome to the board. There is another humping thread going on right now that might help you out. http://thelabradorforum.com/threads/humping.13607/page-2#post-205455 I posted there what worked for me and my boy. For us being tired had nothing to do with it that I could see. He would hump when he was tired or when he just woke up. It seemed to depend more on when he had access to his favourite humping things, like towels or laundry left lying on the floor. I certainly would not put up with humping on my hand or the pillow in the linked thread but substituting an approved object, encouraging on that object, worked for me. To me this is no different than substituting an appropriate chew toy for a hand. Good luck with however you decide to go. What is puppy's name? Can we see photos?
I would just distract him, or move your hand. Just very gently discourage the behaviour and don't let it turn into a habit (I personally wouldn't encourage it on any object at all, because I very much dislike dogs humping anything). Popping a tired puppy, or over excited puppy, into a crate for a bit is fine. But in order for it actually stop the humping, then the puppy has to see being the crate as somewhere he doesn't want to go (at least at that time) and associate it with the humping. I always think that's very hard to do without making it a very obvious punishment, sounding angry etc, so don't think 'time outs' are all that effective. But, like I say, a bit of quiet time for an over excited puppy is different, of course.
Thanks for the warm welcome. I'll read through the other thread as well, thanks for pointing it out. We haven't decided on a name yet. I'll grab some more pictures when we go outside, at the moment he's sleeping belly-up He'll soon grow out of this crate, but for now it's a massive help with potty training Thanks, i'll give it a try with a different distraction as well and see if it works edit: made the image a bit smaller
Aw, he looks just lovely. Yep, just about outgrown that puppy crate already! They grow like weeds, don't they?
Hi and welcome to the forum. Your boy looks lovely how old is he? He looks a really big puppy. I agree with JulieT and would certainly go the distraction route vey easy to do at this age, and for me humping is not something you want to encourage
Hi and welcome, I too decided that humping wasn't a behaviour I wanted to encourage, so I use distraction.
Yeah, he was the biggest in the litter. 9 weeks as of yesterday. We're visiting the vet in a couple of days for his vacinations, we'll weight him again, but when leaving the litter he was 8kg if I remember correctly. I'm slightly worried that i might be overfeeding him, but i can feel his ribs easily at the moment and this hasn't changed with the week we've been together. They do, luckily I have a bigger crate waiting for him already
Welcome from Hattie 8 years and rescue boy Charlie 5 years. Oh your puppy is just gorgeous. No suggestions about humping as we haven't experienced it! Enjoy the forum. Helen x
Was reading the articles on the main site and remembered this thread. Thought I'd post a small update. He hasn't humped any humans for months now. Just stopping the behaviour and placing him in the crate/distracting him with other activities did wonders. We do have an issue with humping other dogs but there's some progress on that front as well. He comes away ~60% of the times I call him while he's doing his thing that was about two months ago, don't have anything more recent on the computer at the moment.
Yep, you do need something bright on a black dog, don't you! Glad to hear the humping is mostly a thing of the past. 16 weeks here and not a hump in sight...long may this last.
Oh what a beautiful baby boy! My boy humps his soft toy (Eyore) and only him, luckily never tried humans or other dogs. As Eyore is a toy that is only in our home and only happens when my boy is tired - after "finishing" within a few minutes he falls asleep - it is not something we are too worried about, although if he tried to hump anything else we would distract him to stop it continuing.
