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One of the most common questions asked in the clinic is why a spayed or neutered pet still sometimes appears to have sexual desire. This can often appear as mounting of people’s legs, other animals, furniture, or sometimes fluffy toys. And while sex hormones clearly play a role in sexual desire, there are many other factors in surgically sterilized pets that can lead to such behaviors. |
There are adrenal and other glandular sources of sex hormones in the body, which can play a role in such behaviors. Also, mounting can often indicate a dominance gesture in dog society, with the mounting dog expressing a dominance behavior by sexually mounting. Finally, I have seen some pets that have had chronic reactions to rabies vaccinations and become more sexually aroused. In fact, in the veterinary texts, one of the symptoms of rabies is actually increased sexual desire. And while pets that start excessively mounting in the months following a rabies vaccination are not actually rabid, they are expressing symptoms of what is actually seen in the natural disease.
The best solution to this common and frustrating behavior is to simply interrupt the behavior with a noxious stimulus such as shaking a coffee can full of coins or spraying the pet with a water pistol during the unwanted behavior, so that the pet couples this stimulus with the behavior and thus learns not to mount inappropriately.
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