Kendall Aliza
05-02-2005, 10:15 PM
So my dog does the strangest thing and I cannot figure out what it means or if I am doing the right thing to correct him.
Heres a little background on my dog: He was rescued about 4 months ago used to be so scared of other people/dogs I couldnt even walk him down the road. I couldnt even have people over without him barking the entire time. It was just awful...
So now I have an absolutely wonderful dog! A little people shy still, he'll take treats and sniff but is hesitant about letting them pet him right away. He is great on walks and is graduating from doggy school this coming Sunday (yay!!!!)
Before he was fixed (at about 10 months of age) he'd try to hump me and I naturally assume it was some kind of dominance game thing. Anyway, I never let it fly ... so I've never actually seen him thrusting, just latching on like hes about to hump... so maybe he was never going to hump for all I know... And it pretty much stopped altogether after a few times of him trying it and me redirecting him to something else.
So when I take him for walks now we will be walking down my driveway which is a large hill and will often be ahead of him. This makes me a little bit smaller heighth wise than what he is accustomed to... and at about this point he'll start to tuck in behind me and latch onto my leg. Most of the time I can feel that he is about to do it so I just put him into a sit and I'll make him shake or do something along those lines... Then I'll start going down the hill and about half the time he'll try it again and the other half we'll just go on about our walk like nothing ever happened. This is the ONLY time he ever does it...
So is this him just being excited by being closer to me in heighth than he normally is??? Does that even make sense? Am I doing the right thing to correct the behavior? It works to prevent him from doing it a first or second time... but I'd really like to stop the behavior altogether. Any ideas?
He weighs 40 lbs and is retriever mix btw.
Heres a little background on my dog: He was rescued about 4 months ago used to be so scared of other people/dogs I couldnt even walk him down the road. I couldnt even have people over without him barking the entire time. It was just awful...
So now I have an absolutely wonderful dog! A little people shy still, he'll take treats and sniff but is hesitant about letting them pet him right away. He is great on walks and is graduating from doggy school this coming Sunday (yay!!!!)
Before he was fixed (at about 10 months of age) he'd try to hump me and I naturally assume it was some kind of dominance game thing. Anyway, I never let it fly ... so I've never actually seen him thrusting, just latching on like hes about to hump... so maybe he was never going to hump for all I know... And it pretty much stopped altogether after a few times of him trying it and me redirecting him to something else.
So when I take him for walks now we will be walking down my driveway which is a large hill and will often be ahead of him. This makes me a little bit smaller heighth wise than what he is accustomed to... and at about this point he'll start to tuck in behind me and latch onto my leg. Most of the time I can feel that he is about to do it so I just put him into a sit and I'll make him shake or do something along those lines... Then I'll start going down the hill and about half the time he'll try it again and the other half we'll just go on about our walk like nothing ever happened. This is the ONLY time he ever does it...
So is this him just being excited by being closer to me in heighth than he normally is??? Does that even make sense? Am I doing the right thing to correct the behavior? It works to prevent him from doing it a first or second time... but I'd really like to stop the behavior altogether. Any ideas?
He weighs 40 lbs and is retriever mix btw.