Handling Dog Mating Behavior And Your Dog’s Sex Drive

Learn About Dog Mating
And How To Manage
Your Dog’s Sex Drive

Dog mating is a perfect example of ritualized instinctive behavior, it reveals our dog’s inborn ability to fulfill their natural needs.

Their sex drive urges dogs, male and female, to mate and pass their genes to the next generation, inducing sexual behaviors through stimulating hormonal changes, eliciting instinctual behaviors that lead to mating.

But dog mating is not all, scent marking, dog mounting, searching for mates and fighting for mates are also behaviors motivated by the sex drive in dogs and triggered by hormonal changes. These behaviors facilitate the process of selecting a suitable mate and courtship, allowing dogs to know who to mate with and when the time is right for successful procreation.

When you own a sexually mature dog, these behaviors will always be present and due to the power that sex drive has over your dog’s behavior, they can become difficult to control.

Here is when the importance of knowledge comes in to play, to help you recognize, understand and manage them properly giving you the tools to fulfill your dog’s natural needs and keep its sex drive under control.

Understanding and managing your dog’s sexual behaviors

* Scent Marking

Female dogs in heat will do scent marking to let males know they are ready to mate. That urine is loaded with hormones called pheromones, which also arouses males’ sexual instincts.

- How to manage?

Dog marking not only contain sexual information, it's loaded with identity information like age, health, diet, energy level, presence in the territory, status and compatibility which helps to avoid conflicts and also plays an important role in the way dogs share social information.

Therefore scent marking using urine or feces is a healthy behavior, but like any other behavior needs to be allowed with certain restrictions, to avoid problems like marking at home or marking on just about anything. By certain restrictions we mean, giving your dog a chance to mark and sniff around during walks, making sure you determine when and where scent marking is allowed, remember that a walk is not just about marking like a maniac, it's about providing leadership through structured physical and psychological stimulation.

Any other marking should be consistently corrected, to permanently eliminate the behavior.

* Searching For Mates

When dogs are physiologically ready for mating their reproduction drive becomes extremely powerful, and if given a chance they will escape their yards and roam the streets obsessively marking everywhere in order to find a mate, putting themselves in danger of getting run over by cars or getting in fights with other dogs.

- How to manage?

Provide plenty of physical activity to help release excessive energy and make sure to provide a well enclosed place for your dog. Spaying or neutering your dog will eliminate this problem.

* Dog Mounting

Pheromones (hormones) are also responsible for a distinctive scent in the female’s body when they are ready for mating, which arouses sexual behavior in males, who will instinctively attempt to mount as part of the dog mating ritual. Dog mounting can also be a display of dominance, which is not related to the sex drive or dog mating behaviors.

- How to manage?

Unless you are expecting a couple to mate, mounting should be stopped immediately.

If mounting behavior, also known as dog humping, is attempted on a dog of the same sex its a display of dominance, more than anything else, therefore it needs to be stopped right away, before it ends up as a fight. Your dog should never be allowed to display dominance toward other dogs; consistently and promptly correcting the behavior will permanently eliminate it. Make sure you persist on keeping your dog in a submissive state of mind at all times. Intact dogs are more inclined to display this behavior, that's why spaying or neutering your dog is a big help in eliminating it.

* Fighting For Mates

When sexual hormones are influencing behaviors, dogs become more receptive to the opposite sex, but will also become more aggressive towards dogs of the same sex, since they are considered sexual rivals, especially in the presence of a desired mate.

- How to manage?

Avoid threesomes; males or females will be willing to fight for their right to mate with a desired breeding candidate.

If you have a dog in heat, keep her safe by providing a well fenced placed to be during these period to avoid unwanted visitors and keep her from escaping and getting in trouble.

Once again, spaying or neutering your dog is an option that will eliminate this problem and most dog mating behavior problems.