To expose themselves, their underside in general, their genitalia in particular.
But if that’s true, why would a dog want to expose itself to an inanimate object?
First, let’s review the traditional/behavioral interpretation of leg-lifting. Elizabeth Marshall Thomas in “The Hidden Life of Dogs” noticed that the higher a stain appears on a post or wall, the next dog along would go to great lengths to hike its spray just a bit higher, the contortions being especially impressive if it was a small dog. She interprets this as a dog’s attempt not only to cover the preexisting mark with its own but to produce one somewhat higher in order to make itself appear larger than it really is and intimidate dogs that come along later. Supposedly this indicates that dogs can think ahead and that they’re thinking about territorial and social status. In this interpretation dogs hose upright objects because they serve as prominent venues for display.
Interestingly however, if leg lifting is fundamentally about competition, one rarely if ever sees two dogs fight it out after the so called contest. And this should strike us as odd because if it is true that a competition for rank is an organizing principle of canine social behavior, how could it be that once every dog’s cards are on the table they invariably agree on their relative status? That’s the opposite of competition. This would be like two people sitting down for a game of poker and were they somehow able to compare their respective winnings over the years; the one with the better record can just scoop up the money and walk away. It would be like two basketball teams eyeing each other during warm ups with both teams coming to a consensus as to which team is better and so no need to actually play the game. In human competition even when a winless team squares up against an undefeated team, the team with a losing record nonetheless contests every shot, rebound and pass. The game is played even when their respective standings won’t be affected by the game’s outcome because this is the essence of the competitive struggle. So in human competitive activities the struggle always follows the preliminaries with the struggle especially intense when there is some degree of question as to which is the stronger team.
So I return to the point that when dogs engage in scent marking, and remain focused on scent marking and are allowed the time and space to let things run their natural course, they rarely if ever fight. How then can the essential thrust of canine behavior be a competition for rank if they invariably end agreeing about their relative status once it’s been broadcast through a spray of urine? Why would dogs ever fight if the distinction between dogs is so unambiguous and easily revealed? Therefore it does not make sense to me that in the mind of the dog leg lifting has anything to do with a competition for rank or a delineation of territory.
In my view the biggest flaw with the traditional/behavioral theory is that it requires a dog to be able to think about such abstract concepts as territory and relative status and perceived future costs and benefits in regards to moving up or down the social ladder. And if a dog can think about all this as Stanley Coren would say they can, let’s then return to Elizabeth Thomas’ astute observation that dogs try to paint its mark higher than the mark of the previous dog that hit the post.
In my mind it actually demonstrates the opposite for if it is true that dogs can think about dominance and rank, why then would dogs only react to the stain of a bigger dog after they’ve encountered it, why not be proactive, why wouldn’t a little dog contort itself into an exaggerated position in order to leave the biggest possible stain before it encounters a bigger one? Why doesn’t a dog go for an impossible height on a blank slate? If it is true that a dog can think about a future consequence why not end all debate on the matter before it begins? This is how athletes compete. When I ran competitive long distance in college my coach taught us to always pass a competitor on a hill, the steeper the better and always pass your rival by a lot rather than by a little. Even better try to be talking casually as you pass by; now that was forward thinking.
Therefore if competition, rank and thinking don’t explain why dogs lift their legs, why would a dog want to expose itself, i.e. become sexually aroused to a fire hydrant, sign post or a tuft of grass? Answer: physical memory
In animal consciousness, there is the expression of energy and there is resistance to the expression of energy. Things that move conduct emotion, things that stand still resist the expression of emotion. Anything that resists the expression of energy triggers physical memory as it creates a feeling of resistance and this is the source of sexual energy.
When a dog encounters an inanimate object that stands out by virtue of being upright and apart from its surroundings, and the more tension that happens to be standing in the dog’s system, then the more it projects the physical memory of resistance onto such an object, and then it responds to it sexually, i.e. it exposes itself and relieves the feeling of resistance by urinating because it feels to the dog just as if it is encountering another dog. And the fact that there often is the scent of dog urine on such prominent objects greatly reinforces that emotional impression that arose from the emotional battery.
Finally, the higher the mark on the post, the more the dog must look up and therefore the deeper into the physical memory bank such an object of resistance triggers. In other words, upright objects and things overhead trigger deeper physical memories than smaller objects and lower things (sorry to add one more level of complexity, unless the physical memory of a little or lower thing is especially intense). And the deepest physical memories are from the earliest days of a dog’s “litter-hood” when its mother constantly licked its anal/genital area because infant puppies cannot urinate or defecate unless stimulated by their mother. So when dogs encounter objects of resistance, they feel sexually energized by virtue of physical memory and this energy is how they are equipped to either align with or overcome said object of resistance. They are exposing themselves due to that physical memory, and then they are then going to attempt to mount the object not because they are trying to dominate it or to copulate, but because they are trying to resist being rolled over.
So in the case of the very high stain, the dog isn’t trying to out do the previous mark: it’s acting just like a little dog trying to mount a bigger one. It’s just trying to get a leg up.
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Natural Dog Training is about how dogs see the world and what this means in regards to training. The first part of this book presents a new theory for the social behavior of canines, featuring the drive to hunt, not the pack instincts, as seminal to canine behavior. The second part reinterprets how dogs actually learn. The third section presents exercises and handling techniques to put this theory into practice with a puppy. The final section sets forth a training program with a special emphasis on coming when called.Tags: leg lifting
I’m glad you wrote this article Kevin as this is something I’ve often pondered about. My dog Indy marks quite a bit on our walks, whether on leash or off. If he’s off leash, he’ll mark every 30-50ft, especially if he catches the scent of another dog’s urine. He’ll even lick their urine off the plant or tree.
Another thing I noticed about a year ago is that he has an urge to mark when meeting another dog– after marking, he seems to be much more comfortable with socializing.
So I started pushing with him after we passed a dog, or after he had a brief meeting with one. His urge to mark disappeared. Unfortunately I haven’t kept it up, so he has gone back to his old ways.
Would you say the frequency of a dog marking is indicative of a large amount of stress stored in their emotional battery? Does it make sense that pushing would resolve this?
I hope to be making the trip to VT for your seminar in August with Indy in tow!
All dogs are biostatic charge machines and are storing stress all the time. So it’s not that Indy has more stress than other dogs, it’s that he is more sensitive to the stress he has. The variance in how dogs respond to stress is the basis of personality. Pushing teaches the dog to channel its stress to you, and then encouraging Indy to biting the prey object becomes the resolution of this energy. Then as you two walk together if the outing involves getting to the bite object at some point, he will feel the connection with you and won’t build up such a charge. You’ll see him start to soften about the scents of the other dogs and will start to eliminate more when he needs to eliminate rather than having to unwind all the time. Hopefully, I’ll see you and Indy in Vermont.
Very interesting! I see this! I have always said dogs are emotional not logical, and it’s all emotion, but you understand that a lot better than I have. Sometimes I have seen that “avoiding getting rolled-over” move with the tree. Interesting concept, but not sure how you will ever prove it! How an this be proven? I love it! I started doing some pushing, fantastic, so I need to make sure I am doing it right, I’d like to start study with you as soon as possible. Thanks so much for your time, can’t wait to introduce you to my dogs. I do think they think, I have some evidence of that, that they can add up a couple of concepts, and on the one hand, maybe they do conceptualize environment into territory, and competition, but how exactly they are “thinking” and what they perceive, that is so open to questioning and research and trials, and so I can’t take it for granted, that’s for sure!! I can’t wait to explore that through your approach. I’m very excited to find your work!!
Yasi
At first, what we think of as thinking seems self-evident but can actually be explained far better in terms of emotion as energy. Little by little through these posts I hope to articulate this idea because it actually reveals something far more sublime and magical about nature than the idea that dogs think like we think.
I was going to say I’ve never seen dogs pee on other dogs, then I remembered all the times I’ve thought, looking at a dog, “what are you standing there for? You’re gonna get peed on!” I’ve seen dogs go and practically try to stand in the stream of another dog! Curious. And I have seen dogs pee on people, twice. Once on the owner, once on a stranger.
I remmember when i was a child i and my brother was out walking with our male dog, while we was talking with some people outsite a shop our dog our dog lifted hes leg upon a man
Jannik
Any secretion of the body is “prey energy” in the animal mind and so is calming because it is a ground for emotion as a virtual current of energy. The waste product then becomes an objectification of two dogs attraction for each other, they can then revolve around it and begin the process of emotional synchronization. So they first make indirect contact through this objectification of energy, and that sets them up for making direct contact.
Hi, I stumbled on your article while trying to figure out the following problem: my eight year old Jack Russel male recently, surprisingly, lifted his leg against a business associate who had come to call. I was wondering if you could explain to me why now all of a sudden he would do something like that? He has never done that before, and we have had plenty of strangers visiting.
An interesting behavior. Energetically speaking, your dog is more attracted to this person than to most other folks, and since he can’t express it directly, he is expressing it indirectly. Another way of saying this is that this person triggers a deeper physical memory in the dog than most other folks, and so it is acting like a little puppy being groomed because that’s the feeling triggered by the resistance engendered by an inordinately strong force of attraction. Now what intensifies a force of attraction so that it can’t be expressed directly, is an emotional charge, and this is always composed of fear. To put this in completely literal logic, which is quite close to emotional/energetic logic, it could be that this person is “pissed” off, but it is masked with very friendly behavior, or there is an emotional charge within you toward this person, especially since there’s business affiliated with the relationship. Another way of saying all of this is that people may not be acting straightforwardly in one way or another in regards to a business matter so that something is being held back, that’s the fear component. One might subsequently ask if there is an especially deep physical memory being triggered within one’s own emotional battery either by the person or the situation because in the course of living with a human, a dog’s emotional battery fuses with its owners’ so that the charge is cumulatively shared with the dog’s behavior reflecting what’s going on subconsciously within its owner. At any rate, this is how I would start to tease apart what’s going on. Hope it helps, Kevin
it is not just that the male dogs like to pee high up.
they seem to be aversed to peeing on the ground and only do it when they have a VERY full bladder, otherwise they go the extra “mile”, cover relatively long distances even if they really have to go, so they can pee on something upright.
of course female dogs do not pee very high up on things and are more prone to just jump out of the car and pee right there, rather than finding a shrub or something that they can lift their leg on,
but I noticed (since i have 2 females) they will prefer to pee over each other’s fresh marks.
also over any fresh male marks (that they can reach)
it almost seems to be like a yawning reflex, when one dog pees, this stimulates the other dog to pee in exactly the same spot.
Or, maybe just a little bit offset so that they achieve to mark a bit more space than was marked before, as described above.
this might be a kind of signalling language that dogs can use to leave specific messages for each other.
I read somewhere that dogs communicate via their scent markings
this theory is also supported in this article about rat urine marking.
http://www.ratbehavior.org/UrineMarking.htm#Function
apparently rats are able to find out testosterone levels in male urine and information about recent ovulation in female urine. etc etc. it is a very interesting article.
of course a lot of it is pure speculation. seems more likely to me though than the competition theory.
We just rescued a 10 month old neutered male Jack Russell who spent the past six months in the Humane Society kennel. He’s a bundle of playful energy and is as sweet as can be (mostly – he IS a JRT) He does not lift his leg, but squats. I’ve seen other males squat as well. Why?
Thanks, that did help. It makes sense what you say… Dogs can be such confusing creatures. Thanks for the great explanation.
Generally the happy-go-lucky ones take longer to lift their legs, whereas the really intense ones do it very early. So he’s squatting since he’s an open channel and just wants release rather than seeking instinctual relief as in hyper-scent marking.