Lifestyle

Why aggressive dog humping isn’t always about sex

She took up her usual position: balanced on hind legs with the front legs resting on top of the other dog’s rump and then thrust, thrust, thrust. At the Madison Square Park dog run, the year-and-a-half-old spayed French bulldog Ducky began humping the rear end of one of her favorite female companions, Lola, a pointer mix who, though skinny, stood several heads taller than her stocky “companion.”

“It’s her hobby, her thing,” Khamara Hollar, the dog’s walker, explains.

Humping. The dog behavior that causes owners to cringe. The mutts do it. The pedigrees do it. The girls and, more often, the boys do it. To each other, to grandma’s leg and the couch pillow.

But experts say it doesn’t always mean what we might think it means. “Dogs do it for various reasons: for sexual behavior, for play, when they’re excited or stressed,” says Cristina Carbonell, a veterinarian at Gotham Veterinary Center on the Upper West Side.

The humping between these two females, walked together since they were puppies, is most likely a form of play, says Chris Wright, the senior behavioral counselor at Biscuits & Bath, a dog daycare. “For them, it’s just like rolling around on the ground or any of the other play behaviors.”

And if Fido starts getting busy with your calf, it doesn’t mean he’s a dirty boy. “If a dog is humping your leg or a pillow, it’s usually more about tension and stress,” explains Robert Haussmann, a certified professional dog trainer and behavior counselor who operates Dogboy NYC. “It’s a little like thumb-sucking. Most of the dogs we deal with are fixed, so they’re not humping for sex.”

Sometimes, though, humping behavior is indeed sexual. “If you see an intact male dog mounting a female dog, even if she’s not intact, then it’s probably sexual,” says Maria Racioppo, a veterinarian at St. Marks Veterinary Hospital in the East Village.

Neutering or spaying, usually done when a puppy is 5 to 7 months old, can decrease the behavior, but not 100 percent, she says.

In New York City, where dogs live in an ever-changing pack environment — from the street to daycare — just figuring out who’s alpha and who’s not can set off a round of humping.

“We know every time a new dog comes into our pack there’s going to be a little bit of that, because it’s a social cue for them to figure out where everybody is at,” says Wright.

Both Haussmann and Wright recommend redirecting hump-crazed dogs toward better behaviors with commands they know, such as “sit,” or “off,” or into a brief timeout. A favored chew toy might work for a puppy. Be consistent, but don’t overreact.

“Be careful you don’t do a lot of yelling ‘No, no, no!’ because then you’re getting worked up and the dog senses it,” says Wright. “Stay calm.”

Either way, humping is, well, natural for dogs, too.

“I try to tell people, ‘Your dog is not broken, nor necessarily aggressive or dominant.’ Every dog is an individual. Some people are more interested in control or sex than others. It’s the same with dogs,” says Haussmann. “It’s a normal thing for a dog, even though it might be uncomfortable for us.”