Fixed Action patterns

Criosphynx

Chili did one of these today and it made me remember this article...it can also be found in Jeans new book "oh behave"

Dogs in Canada Oh behave: Love and mounting

He stalked a toy today, like a cat. It was awesome.

fawkese1

that is a fantastic article crio! thank you so much for posting it! that is seriously the best explanation i've read/heard for mounting! and i really like the way jean puts it too... she's a clever one...

Mikey

I want to print that and pin it at the dog park. Seriously aside from mounting some people get so upset when their dog is obviously playing-'stop that' and on and on-for barking or biting or rolling etc -very well written

fawkese1

omg! seriously... i find myself thinking about this all the time...lol... another one is the "how to break up a fight" thread... if you are going to have your dog at the dog park, makes sense to learn this stuff, since you don't know who's bringing what in there...

anyway, dogs mounting at the dog park annoys/worries me tho... at home or with "friend dogs" i don't care so much, but at the dog park, when everyone is so amped up, it doesn't always go over well, but i don't really freak out about it or anything... just interrupt it...
i also interrupt sometimes if the play gets really intense... depending on how well i know the dogs... i've seen it turn from play to squabble to fight pretty quick...and i've gotten pretty good at predicting it, luckily clover is also getting good and coming to me when he hears growling. sorry, bit OT

Criosphynx

as it does me. I have never had a dog accept it when my dog objects, no matter how hard they object, they just come right back. Also when there is no play involved and the dog just randomly starts humping mine.I think som' dogs become habitual with it since they lack other social skills. Its like the only way they know how to interact. Reminds me of the person that bear hugs you before an introduction. Very annoying.

Perhaps I've had too many serial humpers attack us. I have had dogs I physically could not pry off of Scooter on multiple occasions.

fawkese1

agree totally, luckily clover is bigger than a lot of dogs, or the same size, so he can usually just move out from under them...

there was this one time tho when i took him snow shoeing and we ran into a dog that was lighter and taller than him and he couldn't get out from under him in the snow... it was actually really funny to watch him try (he wasn't upset, just trying to wriggle out and play)

anyway this totally
i see this, they get soooo excited and over-stimulated and they don't know what else to do so they fall back on a sort of default behavior cuz they can't think...

Mikey

For the MOST part people are pretty understanding of the humping. Mikey humps every female he plays with for the first few minutes of the first meeting. And when they tell him to stop he will-Asia-one of his friends gets humped by everyone and she will tell them to stop.
IMO I've found that when the dog says 'stop' the other dog will listen-whereas when an owner tries to stop it they just get back into it.
But anyways that's probably not universal-just what I've seen.
And so many people think their dog is gay or what have you-*eye roll*

And some dog owners don't recognize ANY play. Luckily we haves lots and lots of regulars at the dogpark and I do see people learn. There was this couple bringing a very young pitt puppy and sooo over protective-a dog would sniff the pup and they'd be scooping it up. But they kind of hung around our group and everyone was letting them know what their pup and the other dogs were doing was very appropriate and normal-and now I see them all the time-their dog happily playing and the owners are relaxed. So sometimes they wise up-not always though