Skip to Content

My Dog Has Never Humped – Should I Be Worried?

With dogs being the most commonly kept pet in the world, we see a huge number of questions month in, month out about various problems with dogs.

With there being so many first time dog owners out there who have often only recently added their puppy to their family, we have noticed more and more people asking about if they should be worried because their dog has never humped anything.

You don’t have to spend long on social media groups for dog owners to find someone (often multiple people) asking the exact opposite question on how they get their dog to stop humping things so we do understand why we see so many people asking this question each month.

That said though, there is a huge amount of confusion out there about dogs humping so we wanted to publish this article to try and help as many of our readers as possible.

What Does Humping Signify in Dogs?

First of all, let’s just quickly go over what dog’s humping actually signifies.

While there are a few different reasons why your dog might hump things (or people), in the vast majority of cases it is simply a way for your dog to try and establish dominance rather than to do with anything sexual.

Male dogs will hump other male dogs and female dogs will hump other female dogs to try and gain position in what they see as their pack.

In some situations, they may see their humans as members of their pack and feel the need to hump you too.

While it is perfectly natural behavior, that doesn’t mean that you should allow your dog to hump you or anyone else as it can be quite unpleasant if they get too enthusiastic about it!

Now, there are some dogs out there both male and female who are just naturally submissive and never try to hump anything.

If you have a submissive dog, they will often roll onto their back as soon as they see you to show submission before they come to greet you and play.

At What Age Do Dogs Start Humping?

If you have a puppy, you may be wondering at what age they will start to hump things.

The answer to this is that it can vary quite significantly from dog to dog with some puppies starting to hump as young as 6 weeks old while others may not start until they are 6 months old or even older.

Generally speaking, smaller breeds of dog tend to start humping earlier than larger breeds but this isn’t always the case.

If your puppy is starting to hump things, don’t worry too much about it as they are just exploring their dominance and it is a perfectly natural behavior.

As we said earlier in the article though, some dogs are just naturally submissive, especially to their owners who they spend more time with and they will just never hump.

Is It Normal for Dogs Never to Hump?

If you do have a submissive dog then it can be totally normal for it to never hump anything.

Due to so many people having problems with their dogs humping pretty much everything they can, people presume that something much be physically wrong with a dog that never humps but this couldn’t be further from the truth.

Although it is difficult to get exact figures, it is estimated that between 20% and 30% of all male dogs are submissive and will hump less or not at all without there being anything physically or mentally wrong with the dog.

Female dogs are much less likely to be submissive with only around 5% to 10% of them being classed as such.

The older a dog is, the less likely it is to hump too so please keep this in mind.

If you would like assurance then you can take your dog to a vet for a check up as there are some health issues that may cause a dog never to hump but these are rare and in most cases, you will just have a submissive dog.