ohmidog!

What your dog sees as humpworthy may include other dogs (male and female), your child, your ottoman, your favorite pillow, your house guest, a stuffed animal, your leg, or anything else he — or even she — can latch on to.

It’s one of those canine behaviors we humans find less than endearing, downright embarassing and highly confusing; and, as a result, our reaction is usually to bow our heads in shame, holler at the offending dog, or pretend it’s not happening.

So it’s good to see somebody boldy jumping on the subject — and getting across the point, among others, that the behavior is totally normal.

Julie Hecht, who manages Alexandra Horowitz’s Dog Cognition Lab at Barnard College in New York City, explores the ambiguous and often avoided topic of non-reproductive humping in the latest issue of  The Bark magazine.

“From tail wagging to barking, dog behavior is riddled with nuance. A wagging tail might convey ‘I’m quite scared’ or ‘This is the best day ever!’ Like tail wagging, mounting is far more complex than it may appear, and there is not one simple explanation. But there are some likely candidates.”

Hecht holds a master’s degree in applied animal behavior and welfare from the University of Edinburgh, and she’s an adjunct professor at Canisius College. More important than any of that, she’s not afraid to tackle a subject that offends the more prim and proper among us.

So is humping sexual, or part of an instinctual urge — “must … reproduce … now” — to create offspring?  Is it a display of aggression, an assertion of dominance, or just a way to relieve some pent up energy? Clearly, it’s not always and entirely motivated by sexual arousal, Hecht notes, for pillows aren’t usually that arousing.

For nearly as long as ethologists have studied dogs, they have taken note of dogs’ tendency to hump outside of reproductive contexts, she writes.

University of Colorado ethologist Marc Bekoff observed way back in the 1970s that young canids — pairs of three- to seven-week-old wolves, coyotes and dogs — were prone to pelvic thrusting, and that females also engaged in some of that behavior.

“It’s what dogs do. It’s a completely normal behavior,” explains Carolyn Walsh, PhD, associate professor of psychology at Memorial University of Newfoundland, who studies the nuances of dog behavior in dog parks. “Both males and females mount, regardless of whether [they are] sexually intact or not.”

It can come from a surge of emotion, anxiety or arousal,  Walsh explains. 

“Dog parks can be quite stimulating, and for those who are highly aroused physiologically, mounting behavior could easily come out. There can be such a buildup of social motivation and the desire to affiliate that some of that energy spills over into the sexual motivation system. You see sexual behavior coming out, but it’s mostly out of context.”

Hecht also interviewed Peter Borchelt, a certified applied animal behaviorist in New York City, who pointed out, “There are only so many behaviors a dog has access to, and dogs do what is part of their species-typical behavior. It is something they know how to do.”

Many dog owners equate humping to dominance and control, but it can also be a friendly and less than lecherous attempt to get another dog to play. It may be a cry for attention, a way for dogs to gauge the bond they have with other dogs, or to test just how much a play partner is willing to tolerate.

“This is the idea that dogs perform potentially annoying behaviors like mounting to test the strength of the recipient’s investment in the relationship,” said Becky Trisko, a behaviorist and owner of Unleashed in Evanston, Ill., who has studied dog-dog interactions in the dog daycare setting.

“It’s like saying, ‘How much will you put up with?’ ‘How much do you really like me?’”

Despite all the dirty connotations we humans attach to pelvic thrusting, with dogs the behavior seems — while stemming from various emotions — to be more of a celebration of life than anything else. Cooped up in houses all day, a trip to the dog park, or even just seeing the leash come out, can get dogs excited to the point that something else comes out. Humping, or even an erection, it seems to me, isn’t all about sex when it comes to dogs — that’s just how we’re prone to interpreting it.

We humans equate it with sexual lust, but, with dogs, humping might just be a natural way to celebrate, like the high-fiving or chest-bumping of frat boys, or that “woo-hoo” noise girls make when they get together.

Looking at it through a less tainted lens, one could even make the argument that the behavior — humping, not woo-hooing — is more charming than it is revolting.

For the dog, joy is joy; and embarassing as it might be for us to see any overlap between sexual pleasure and just plain happiness, dogs don’t seem to get all bogged down in what might be the appropriate expression of their various happy and excited emotions.

Is that dirty? Or is there a certain purity there? Do dogs have their emotions confused? Or do they have it right?

None of this is to say you should try it at home, at the corner bar, or anywhere else. Civilized society dictates we don’t engage in that behavior. It’s only to say we shouldn’t get too bent out of shape when our dogs hump.

Rather than punishing a dog for exhibiting glee, it makes more sense to gently redirect the behavior. Watch closely at the dog park and you’ll see that many dogs — the humpees, as opposed to the humpers – do that themselves, with a growl or snarl.

My dog Ace does not tolerate it — whether it’s him being humped, or another dog. He feels the need to break it up, and, should he see one dog mounting another, he will generally rush over and do so.

I’m not sure where that behavior comes from.

Maybe he has become too human.

(Painting by Lachlan Blair, from his father Stuart Blair’s blog)

For dogs it’s the ears, for cats it’s the bladder.

That’s what most often leads owners of ailing pets to the veterinarian, according to Veterinary Pet Insurance.

VPI, which describes itself as the nation’s oldest and largest provider of pet health insurance, sorted its database of 485,000 insured pets to determine the top 10 dog and cat medical conditions in 2011.

Ear infections, skin allergies and skin infections were the most common reasons for dogs to visit the vet.

With cats, the top three were bladder infections, chronic kidney disease and over-active thyroids.

“The large number of claims received for these medical conditions attests to their common, often repetitive, and sometimes chronic nature,” said Dr. Carol McConnell, vice president and chief veterinary medical officer for VPI.

“While many pet owners fear major accidents and illnesses, which can cost thousands of dollars to treat for a single incident, repetitive and chronic conditions can be just as detrimental to a pet’s quality of life and financially burdensome to the pet owner.”

In 2011, VPI received more than 62,000 canine claims for ear infections. The average claim fee was $98 per office visit. For cats, bladder infections were most common, with an average claim amount of $233 per office visit.

The most expensive canine condition on the list (non-cancerous skin growth) cost an average of $220 per visit, while, for cats, the most expensive condition (lymphosarcoma) cost an average of $426 per visit

Here are the top 10 conditions dogs for which dogs were treated, according to the VPI study:

1. Ear Infection
2. Skin Allergies
3. Skin Infection
4. Non-cancerous Skin Growth
5. Upset Stomach
6. Intestinal Upset/Diarrhea
7. Arthritis
8. Bladder Infection
9. Bruise or Contusion
10. Underactive Thyroid

 
1. They wouldn’t give overly long acceptance speeches.

2. They wouldn’t waste huge amounts of money on gowns.

3. They would deal better with both victory and defeat.

4. We like them, we really like them.

5. They could get to the stage much more quickly.

6. It makes more sense than Michael Vick getting a “Courage Award.”

7. They’ve been snubbed as a species by the academy for far too long.

8. Their ego and bank accounts don’t require constant feeding — just themselves.

9. Oscar chew toys would be cheaper than statuettes

10. The red carpet is probably cleaned every year anyway.

(Photo: From the movie “Hotel for Dogs)

The Dogs Trust in England has released a list of the top ten most irresponsible reasons pet owners have given for abandoning their dogs:

1. “My dog doesn’t match the sofa.”

2. “The dog looks evil and has different coloured eyes, just like David Bowie.”

3. “My black dog doesn’t match the new white carpet, can we swap him for a white dog?”

4. “My current dog is too old, can we swap for a puppy or younger model?”

5. “My dog ate the Christmas turkey cooling on the work-top.”

6. “My pet guinea pig got worried with a dog in the house.”

7. “The dog opened all the presents on Christmas Eve.”

8. An owner accidentally knelt in the dog’s urine while cleaning it up so brought the dog in the very next day.

9. A puppy was bought as a present for an elderly couple with dementia.

10. The owner was paranoid about recent bad press on Staffordshire Bull Terriers, and the dog was given up through no fault of its own.

Thirty years since the charity made famous the trademarked slogan “A dog is for life not just for Christmas,” people are dumping their pets for the flimsiest of reasons, the Independent reports. The trust says that although the number of dogs given as gifts has fallen over the past three decades, people are still taking on the responsibility of dog ownership without enough consideration of what it entails.

As a result, the trust says its 17 centers will put a moratorium on adoptions through Christmas. People will be able to visit and reserve a dog, but they will not be able to take it home until the New Year.

Clarissa Baldwin, chief executive of Dogs Trust, said: “The ‘A dog is for life, not just for Christmas’ slogan is just as relevant today as it was when I created it 30 years ago.”

The trust cares for more than 16,000 stray, unwanted and abandoned dogs each year.