# My adult male dog tried to hump my male puppy



## Sunshine0127 (Feb 20, 2011)

Hi everyone,

As the title explains, my adult male dog (Max) who is 11 years old tried to hump our male puppy (Kaiser) who is now 19 weeks old. 
Up until now Max has have never shown much interest in Kaiser, apart from a bit of playing and Max putting Kaiser in his place when he was annoying Max with his puppy antics. But now with Kaiser being the same size as Max i was just wondering if this is a form of Max showing his dominance to Kaiser or has Max come out of the closet.

Thanks in advance


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## RobD-BCactive (Jul 1, 2010)

My hunch would be that Max is detecting rising testosterone level and similar size. I shouldn't worry about it being sexual.

We had a thread last month discussing various Humping combos, I had a rash of "desirable" neutered chocolate Labs, who just seem to ignore it, but obviously the owners worry about dominance, even if it occurs between friends playing. These Labs often seem to have compromised agility due to their weight.

It is apparently young male dogs, about 6 months old, that are apparently most often targetted in dog park attacks by bullying young males.


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## Rottiefan (Jun 20, 2010)

A lot of humping is context-specific. It depends on who's around, what's happening, what the dogs are doing, what time it is etc. Heightened stress levels can make dogs hump- this could be during over-exuberant play, exciting times like food time, or even when dogs are (wongly) being 'told off'. 

So what was exactly going on when Max started humping Kaiser? 

Many attribute this behaviour down to the dreaded 'dominance', which if you search around on this forum you'll find many posts explaining why dominance is not an accurate description of dog-dog or dog-human social behaviours. So don't worry about it being that.


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## Sunshine0127 (Feb 20, 2011)

Thank-you for your replies RobD-BCactive and Rottiefan is it very much appreciated.

Rottiefan - I have to say Max did try and hump Kaiser after they had a giddy 20mins play (which was unusual for Max).

:001_smile:


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## RobD-BCactive (Jul 1, 2010)

So that may be Max, mounted to calm himself, Kaiser now taxed him more so he did this.

I mentioned about young males, as they're ones you'ld most likely have to intervene with to protect Kaiser. I didn't think it would just be a one off though, more youl'd seen it a few times. They're the dog's I'd be protecting particularly if the males I'm walking ganged up out of character and started bullying.


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