New Member from the Pittsburgh and Clearwater, FL areas.

T

Terry Cook

Forums Novice
Although I am in the Clearwater, Fl area for the winter. This is a wonderful platform to learn more about this breed, and you are all wonderfully generous with your knowledge. My sheltie, Kiki, is 7 months old. She is training well, and is a bundle of energy! However, there is one behavior she has had since I got her at 8 weeks: she LOVES to hip bump other dogs, and even people. I thought it might be a herding behavior, but I have never heard anyone else speak of this one. As a little pup she would also climb on top of my older dog cross-wise and just lie there. But now the hip-check is evolving into lifting her back leg and straddling. Not humping. And no, she is not in heat yet. I have seen her do this to smaller dogs. With my large dog, she loves to stand under his legs, like using him as a garage. If I sit with my legs crossed, she will back into my foot, and lift her back leg, and just stand there on top of my foot, not even touching it, really. It is so funny, but WHY?
 
Welcome, Terry and Kiki! It's so nice to have you with us. I've had Shelties for decades and lots of puppies but I admit, your question is a new one for me! :confused2: I've never known a puppy who does this. But I will say puppies can have some strange behaviors, most of which they outgrow. Hopefully one of our other members might be familiar with this one!
 
I've never heard of this in shelties, but the only insight I can add is one time I did a photo shoot at a Wolf Research center. Before we could go in the pen with the wolves we had to go thru a long safety education lecture. I remember they talked about how one of the wolves might hip check you to test you and see if you were a push over. Truthfully before I entered the enclosure I was properly scared. But having been around dogs all my life and reading their body language I instantly knew when we got in that they meant us no harm. In fact one of the wolves hip checked me briefly but I did not feel intimidated. So I guess my conclusion would be it is a canine behavior, but probably means different things depending on the context.
 
TheDailyPainter said:
I've never heard of this in shelties, but the only insight I can add is one time I did a photo shoot at a Wolf Research center. Before we could go in the pen with the wolves we had to go thru a long safety education lecture. I remember they talked about how one of the wolves might hip check you to test you and see if you were a push over. Truthfully before I entered the enclosure I was properly scared. But having been around dogs all my life and reading their body language I instantly knew when we got in that they meant us no harm. In fact one of the wolves hip checked me briefly but I did not feel intimidated. So I guess my conclusion would be it is a canine behavior, but probably means different things depending on the context.
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Welcome to the forum! I must say that my previous sheltie Laddle would do that when playing. Interesting that wolves do it also.
Please feel free to post pictures of Kiki! We love pictures. You could not have landed on a better site to learn about the breed!
 
Welcome to you and Kiki. I have not heard of this before, and I've learned something just reading this thread! Although my roughneck boy Eli will sometimes body-slam poor Faith when they are chasing the stick, but it's not with his hip. Will be interesting to see if she outgrows it.

And yes, photos, please!
 
Terry Cook said:
Although I am in the Clearwater, Fl area for the winter. This is a wonderful platform to learn more about this breed, and you are all wonderfully generous with your knowledge. My sheltie, Kiki, is 7 months old. She is training well, and is a bundle of energy! However, there is one behavior she has had since I got her at 8 weeks: she LOVES to hip bump other dogs, and even people. I thought it might be a herding behavior, but I have never heard anyone else speak of this one. As a little pup she would also climb on top of my older dog cross-wise and just lie there. But now the hip-check is evolving into lifting her back leg and straddling. Not humping. And no, she is not in heat yet. I have seen her do this to smaller dogs. With my large dog, she loves to stand under his legs, like using him as a garage. If I sit with my legs crossed, she will back into my foot, and lift her back leg, and just stand there on top of my foot, not even touching it, really. It is so funny, but WHY?
Click to expand...
Welcome to the forums! I could not survive being a sheltie mom without Sheltie Nation!!
 
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