It is very embarrassing when my male dog mounts my leg, especially in front of guests. How can I prevent this behavior?
Posted by Dog Supplies Advice in Dog Supplies Q&A, Dog Supplies Tips, tags: Dog, Dog Advice, dog care, Dog Health, Dog Housing, dog Q&A, dog supplies, dog supplies advice, Dog Training, Housing, Pet Supplies, TrainingIt is very embarrassing when my male dog mounts my leg, especially in front of guests. How can I prevent this behavior?
Sexual mounting is a normal part of play for male puppies, and masturbation is also a normal activity around the time of puberty. The dog will clasp objects or other dogs between his forelegs and indulge in pelvic thrusting. Normal adult males lose this behavior and direct their sexual activity towards bitches in heat, although a few may continue to mount males or to mount people.
When people are the recipients of a dog’s mounting it is generally considered to be the result of too early socialization with man, and restricted socialization with his own species, such as may happen if he has been removed from his mother and littermates at five weeks old or earlier. The dog becomes so strongly attracted towards humans that he comes to regard them as his normal sexual partners, and has little or no inclination, or ability, to breed with other dogs. Sometimes bitches will show similar mounting behavior with people for the same reason. Such bitches are unwilling to accept any approach from a dog.
Punishment, as soon as the habit starts, may produce improvement, but often the dog welcomes any contact, especially physical, and consequently shouting, hitting or slapping the dog is gratifying to it and may only reinforce the behavior.
Castration has been found to produce a rapid extinction of abnormal mounting in a third of cases, and a gradual reduction in the practice in a further third. But in the remaining third no improvement occurs. Administration of progestagens (progestins) such as medroxyprogesterone acetate to castrated males in which the behavior persists (and also to bitches that show mounting) will often reduce its occurrence. Although in male dogs mounting activity is primed by male sex hormone, the behavior becomes conditioned and part of the dog’s repertoire. As a result it persists in some animals even after castration and progestagen therapy. In these cases training offers the only solution. The dog must be rejected by being taken to an unoccupied room as soon as it begins to show any sexual interest and left there on its own for at least three minutes, or if it barks, until the end of the first thirty seconds of silence after the three minutes have passed. This procedure is known to behaviourists as ‘time-out’. In the first few days of this regime the dog’s enforced departures will be numerous, but as a rule at the end of between seven and ten days real improvement will be apparent.
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