Many people have experienced the embarrassing moment when their host’s male dog suddenly locks his front legs around their leg and begins to make vigorous pelvic movements.
Why do these dogs start such an unpromising activity?
The answer is that dogs go through a special phase of socialization as puppies, during which they establish their identity. This critical period lasts from the age of four to twelve weeks, and any species that shares this time with them in close and friendly proximity becomes their species. For all domestic dogs, there are always two species present during this crucial stage of growth: dogs and humans. As a result, they become ‘mental hybrids’, strongly attached to both species. For the rest of their lives, they feel comfortable in both canine and human society. Their human family members serve quite well as an adopted ‘pack’. Humans share their food, share their den, go out together to patrol the territory, play together, enjoy a bit of social grooming, perform the required greeting ceremonies, and generally act aptly as companion dogs.
The canine society and the human society make a good couple. Only when it comes to sex is the relationship broken.
Fortunately, there are some powerful innate responses involved in canine sexual attraction, which generally serve to keep dogs on the right track. Since humans do not possess the particular erotic scent of the dog, they do not normally trigger the sexual responses of the male dogs that share their homes. As far as dogs are concerned, people are simply “members of their pack who are never sexual.”
All should be well, but unfortunately for most male dogs, encounters with female dogs in heat are unusually rare events in their domesticated lives. A level of sexual frustration builds up where even the family cat begins to look attractive. At this point, a horny dog will attempt to mount just about anything that will stay still long enough, including cats, other male dogs, cushions, and human legs.
Human legs are attractive because they are easy to hold. The choice of a leg over a more appropriate part of the human anatomy is simply due to the clumsy and undoglike shape of human beings. They are too big and too high, making the leg the only easily accessible region for a sexual advance of last resort.
The correct response to a dog grabbing its legs is compassion rather than anger. It is we, after all, who have condemned such dogs to an abnormally celibate existence. A polite rejection of his advances is all that is needed, not the angry punishment that is sometimes meted out.
The comment about the dog’s interest in the family cat wasn’t meant to be funny. Some sexually frustrated dogs try to mate with cats, but this only happens when the animals in question grew up together as puppies and kittens. A close relationship with young cats during the critical phase of pup development simply adds felines to the ‘my species’ category in the canine mind.
A puppy that has played with:
(a) other pups in her litter,
(b) the family kitten, and
(c) their human owners, during the four to twelve week socialization phase, will have a triple attachment that will last a lifetime.
There is another side of the coin in this attachment process. The absence of a species during the socialization period in the puppy’s development will automatically make it something to avoid later on. This even applies to the true species of the pup itself. If a tiny cub is separated from its mother before its eyes and ears are open, for example when it is only a week old, and is hand-reared in isolation, it will become extremely attached to humans, but it will always be shy with other dogs. in adulthood. Therefore, it is a big mistake to take a puppy out of the family too soon. If there is a disaster, with the mother dying and only one pup surviving, for example, then it is important to try to have other pups or dogs around the young while it is hand-rearing, so that it gets used to the company of its kind during its critical period. of growth.
If a puppy is left with its own canine family but is kept completely away from humans until it is older than twelve weeks, it will never become docile or friendly to people in later life. Pups raised in a field on an experimental farm, where they had no close contact with people until the litter was 14 weeks old, were effectively like wild animals.
The idea that the domestic dog is somehow a ‘genetically domesticated’ animal is not true. The suggestion that wolves are more “wild” and untamed than dogs is also incorrect. A wolf pup caught at a young enough stage of development makes a remarkably friendly companion, so much so that most people, seeing one walking around on a collar and leash, would imagine it to be just another big dog. In fact, on one occasion a domesticated adult wolf was brought from England to the United States on the Queen Elizabeth, registered as an Alsatian, without causing any comment. He was given a daily tour of the deck and fondled happily by passengers and crew, who would have been horrified if they had known his true identity.