We adopted a seven year old, intact male Golden Retriever last July from an older man who need to rehome him due to a heavy travel schedule on a new job. We had just lost our nine yo male, neutered Golden due to Insinuloma twelve days prior before tripping across this new dog. We’ve owned nine Goldens with eight of them being adopted over the past 30 years, so we are relatively familiar with canine behavior, except for intact males.
The prior owner seemed very responsible and truly took good care of Beaux. Beaux is quite intelligent and obeys extremely well… most of the time. I would put him in the Beta dog category with some Alpha sneaking in.
He settled in here extremely well, and quickly, with my wife bring his buddy and me being a big play friend. His owner said he had never mounted another dog of either sex, or marked in the house.
Now… my brother and his wife came up for Christmas for five days. No issues other than Beaux having to share ‘his’ love seat at meals times and in the evenings.
A day or two after they left he all of a sudden started cuddling and humping a large, soft puppy toy that he brought with him. After a few days of trying to stop this, my wife threw it in the washer and hid it.
Yesterday, we come in from our afternoon meal walk and I find him in the living room with my wife’s two afghan blankets she wraps herself in on the sofa and he’s humping them! I took them away and told him ‘No!’ and put them back. We went through this a few times.
Since it’s been 40 years since we’ve had an intact male we’re perplexed as to how to properly handle the sudden change in behavior.
If I recall, neutering at this later age probably won’t help. My wife suggested ‘saltpeter’, but I explained that was an old myth.
Anyone ever have similar experience(s), or ideas as to how to deal with this? I’d hate to see my wife get to the level of wanting to get rid of him, which would only happen because of all the other stresses she’s under and doesn’t want/need more drama to deal with.
I believe this to be more of a reassertion of his level of dominance in ‘the pack of the three of us’, since it just started after he was basically bounced from #3 to #6 for Christmas week. That seems to be the only reason, barring a UTI or prostate issue or something, that might explain the sudden change.
Thanks!
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