That's what someone said about Marco when we went to the dog park recently. Yeeeeeah Marco has a bit of a bad habit. When we're at the dog run, he'll usually pick out a dog and then hump them non-stop. Males, females and especially puppies.

He *knows* he's not supposed to (or rather that i don't approve), and when i catch him doing it he lets go right away. But he just keeps going back to it. To the point where he doesn't leave the other dog alone. Really very irritating.

Any advice on how to deal with mister horn dog?

PS - at home Perry is the one that humps Marc...

No idea how to deal with it. Jack has always been the same way. He's totally indiscriminate - male, female, puppy, senior - he just picks a favourite and focuses his attention on that dog relentlessly. I can generally call him off, but he goes right back to it. Ultimately, I remove him from the play for, but that's never made a lasting impression.

See, Marco is being dominated at home, so he goes out and tries to dominate everybody else in retaliation!

Seriously, it is annoying, but other than constant correction/redirection, I don't know what else to try.

I swear Cousteau gets on the computer at night! This is so like him when he was younger. Now he mostly focuses on goldens and flat coats, but if the right dog comes along...

For one thing, it sounds like Marco may be stressed at the dog run. Cousteau is awful about humping when he's stressed. When things were getting really bad with Beamish bullying Cousteau, Cousteau humped everything that he could catch. (Not that Perry is doing anything near like what B was doing.) Once B was gone, Cousteau's humping improved.

With Cousteau I have to watch him and catch him before he mounts the other dog. He's got several signs that he's getting his swerve on. (He did this at the flyball tournament this weekend when his favorite golden was running in the other lane and Cousteau was getting tired of jumping.)

If I miss the signs or he doesn't listen, he gets one chance for me to call him off and if he doesn't listen, life isn't so good for him. I remove him from the other dog and then the Wrath of Mom comes down upon him. I get in his face and get loud and growly. Then I take him off to the side and make him lie down until he stops tracking his target. If he does it again, he's done in the group and he's stuffed in a crate or back in the car. If he humps an elderly dog or a dog with injuries, all the above steps are reduced to the last one - he gets hauled out and isolated.

This hasn't cured him of humping - not even getting nailed by an angry border collie or almost having his nose removed by a true alpha Great Dane cured him - but he knows the rules and it makes management a little easier. And honestly, when there's a group of more than 3 dogs, he just doesn't get to play. It's too much for him. I don't want him practicing the behavior and I'm afraid he's going to do it to the wrong dog and get seriously maimed. It would completely be his fault, but I don't want to deal with it.

I'm wondering if he'll ever grow out of it. The fact that he's intact doesn't help I'm sure.

What i noticed is that he humps dogs the first time he meets them and then mostly loses interest. For example when my boss brought her standard poodle puppy in for the first time, Marco would not get off him. At one point even she gave him a loud growly "stop it! NO!" and it didn't affect him. He seems to have gained a lot of respect for her and will allow her to pet him (and no one else in the shop can touch him unless they catch him)... but it didn't make him leave the poodle alone. But only on that day - the next time he saw him, he lost interest in the humping and played with him like a normal dog.

I don't really think he's a stress humper. He's a lot more relaxed when we're at the dog park then when we're on a regular walk and he seems genuinely happy to be there. Far more than Perry, even. A few weeks ago Perry got ran over by a bigger dog and since then he's been staying closer to me when we're at the park. Marco got ran over by the same [obnoxious] dog and it didn't phase him at all. He's very resilient. It seems the biggest stress factor at the park is when he gets too humpy and i force him to stay away from the hump-victim dog.

Nutmeg sometimes gets carried away and will hump - it's usually an adrenalin thing (from what I can tell). It's as if she needs an outlet for all her excitement. She also grunts while she'd doing it, which is *spectacular* Mind you, she does it maybe five times a year, so it's not a big problem, and usually one stern "NO" from me followed by a time-out takes care of it.

There's a cocker spaniel in our agility class who is a total Casanova and totally has the hots for any female dogs - Nums especially She does *not* tolerate any humpage at all, but Sam will not back off even after a snark. The owners are proactive and warn people that he's a horn dog, and they've trained a pretty reliable "leave-it", and he's a nice dog, so it's not a big deal to me.

I think just being consistent with time-outs or other consequences and possibly also being courteous by warning people in advance is a good strategy. Most people at my park don't really seem to mind humping dogs.

I've only been going to my dogrun about weekly for three-ish months now, so i see different people each time. But it seems that some are very savvy (dogs hump each other. its normal) and others.... not so much. Marco was picking on a four month old female lab puppy a while ago. And the owner got concerned when he first did it "oh she's not spayed yet, i don't want her to get pregnant..." I had to pause for a minute to realize that she was serious. Then i briefly explained pregnancy/heat and humping for dominance and that they're different things. Oh and that she had a four month old pup, that too. But it amazes me sometimes how little people bother to learn about dogs before getting them. I know i deal with uninformed clients at the grooming shop all the time but by habit i still tend to assume that people are somewhat knowledgeable.