Connie Swaim Canine Behavior Services

08/15/2026

People are often extremely upset with their dog when it eliminates in their home. This often causes even more elimination issues.

Here is my journey with Pippin and teaching him where I would like him to use the bathroom.

“Is he housebroken?” That is a question almost all animal shelter/rescue workers get when someone is inquiring about adopting a dog.   It worries me when that is the first question people ask,…

08/06/2026

I got a new dog! I think many people try to do too much too fast with their new pet; so here is an overview of four weeks with Pippin.

It seems when we get a dog, we want to take it everywhere and do everything with it all at once. People have heard “you need to socialize your dog” but like many words in training and behavior most…

04/21/2026

Do you always have to change the dog’s behavior?

I recently saw a client with a 14-month-old, neutered male dog. They had only had the dog a month when I saw them. They called me because the dog was difficult to walk because he is strong.

However, when I came in, we found another issue. This dog could not stop hu***ng me. I was there 90 minutes and he would only stop hu***ng if he had something else to do. The problem was he would immediately begin hu***ng the second that distraction was of no more interest to him.

He was easy to distract if I played tug or if he had a bone filled with cheese to lick. As soon as the cheese was gone or I stopped playing tug; he would start hu***ng my leg and grabbing my arm with his dew claws on his front legs. And his hu***ng was intense as you can see from the scratches on my arm.

If I got up and walked away from him, he would momentarily stop as well, then just start hu***ng me in my new location.

Luckily, the dog does not do this with the people he lives with; but he does it sometimes to the owner’s daughter and their grandchildren but the owners felt this behavior was lessening as the dog became more familiar with the daughter and grandchildren. The couple rarely has visitors.

So, do they need to “fix” this problem?

Not necessarily. They could manage the issue; meaning that on the rare occasions they do have visitors; they could crate the dog or put the dog in another room for the duration of the visit.

What they can’t do though is nothing. If they do occasionally have visitors and the dog remains that intense about hu***ng, their visitors will not be happy and the dog may become more and more frantic. So, they either need to change the dog’s behavior or manage the dog so he is unable to practice the behavior.

It is very possible this behavior will gradually decrease as the dog is in his new home longer and he relaxes more. But if the behavior is allowed to go on the dog may start to find it more rewarding because he is getting attention when he does it. Negative attention is still attention. Or the dog might hump and then the owners immediately give him a cheese filled bone which would mean that in order to get the cheese filled bone the dog thinks he must hump someone first.

And sometimes this type of frantic behavior can lead to the dog beginning to bite if his anxiety is not addressed.

I do want to be clear that this dog was NOT dominating me nor was this sexual behavior. People often think this behavior has something to do with dominance or they think the dog shouldn’t do it because it is neutered.

If they are unaltered then hu***ng could certainly serve a sexual function. But there are other reasons dogs hump.

The following is from PetMD, “Humping behavior can be directed toward a person when a dog is excited. It is a sign of mental or emotional arousal. The behavior can be a physical outlet for the dog or a way of seeking attention.

“Dogs may select a person to mount based on their relationship with the individual. It may be a sign that the dog prefers the person, or it could actually be a sign that the dog may be anxious about that person.”

In this case the dog was anxious. In the 90 minutes I was in the home he never laid down except for extremely brief moments when he had the bone to chew. But, even with the bone he would lick it standing up vs laying down to relax. He was panting a lot as well. My visit was causing him a lot of emotions he wasn’t equipped to deal with and his only solution was to hump me.

I often have dogs jump on me or hump me when I first go into a home (I ask that the dog not be loose when I enter, but not everyone remembers to do that). About 90 percent of dogs quickly stop the behavior if I ignore them. But, in cases such as with this dog, ignoring just made the dog more frantic and want to hump more.

I would have preferred to have the dog crated or placed in another room so the owners and I could talk without making the dog more anxious (and so I didn’t get so scratched up). But they had never tried crating him or putting him up and they had strong negative feelings toward crating. And if they held onto his leash, he also became frantic trying to get to me. I was afraid to keep filling up his bone with cheese because that would be a lot of cheese in 90 minutes and I found playing tug with him and trying to talk to the owners was more than my brain could easily handle.

In short, the owners were not prepared to manage the dog and the dog didn’t know what to do with himself other than hump me.

I discussed crating and why it wasn’t bad for the dog as long as the dog was trained to love going into the crate. I pointed out that they might sit in their chairs for three hours and not move while watching a movie and that was not punishing; so, leaving a dog in a crate for three hours while he had a bone to chew on or by allowing him to relax and nap was not punishing.

My worry for this dog is he may have some more underlying anxiety than the owners think he does. It was concerning to me that he was unable to lay down and relax while I was there. The owners said he did seem to pace a lot; but they has have not had a dog before so they are unsure what is normal or not normal.

I gave them many ideas for using the dog’s food as enrichment to help him learn to just lay down and chew and lick something. Chewing and licking can be calming events for dogs. That way when they do have visitors, they can bring out four or five frozen Kongs filled with the dog’s kibble and get him to engage with that and over time hopefully he will just learn to relax more when people are visiting.

The trick is to be proactive and not reactive, meaning to give the dog the chew items before he has a chance to hump rather than teaching him hu***ng makes the chew items appear.

My final thought for them was that if the dog was still exhibiting this much anxiety in three or four more months, they may want to have a discussion with their veterinarian.

We eventually got to the reason they called me and it turned out if this dog knew the person holding his leash had cheese, he did not care about his environment and would focus very easily on the person he was walking with.

04/18/2026

Please remember: All dogs can bite! And many bites are to children. Read these numbers!

04/14/2026

An essay on adoption restrictions

I had dinner with a friend this week who was denied the adoption of a 10-year-old Brittany spaniel because of her age. The woman’s age, not the dog’s age.

She is in her 70s. But she is active, can financially care for an older dog, owns her own home with a fenced yard and has 40 years of experience with the breed she wanted to adopt. Her husband is less active but can easily let a dog in and out and interact with the dog.

They were looking for a Brittany because that is what they have always owned and they wanted an older dog because they realize they cannot care for a young dog or puppy.

The rescue sent a person to conduct a home visit. She told them that even older Brittany spaniels are too active for people their age. My friend pointed out they lived across the street from a park that included a huge dog park and that she was an active walker. The home visit person said she doubted my friend could physically hold onto the leash. Now this is not a frail looking woman by any means. She could hold onto the leash.

The in-home visit person also said that if something happened to the dog, they would not be strong enough to pick it up and get into their vehicle to take it to the vet. Yet, the couple has a strong network of friends in their neighborhood who could be called on to help.

So, by that logic I need to get rid of both of my dogs as I cannot pick either of them up.

This couple would have been the perfect home for an older dog. But the rescue let a bunch of “rules” get in the way vs looking at the circumstances in front of them.

I get it. Every person I know in animal rescue has a horror story of a dog (or cat) adopted out and something horrific happens to it. Now many of these stories are not personal knowledge to the person telling the story, but more of someone else they know in animal welfare told them, etc. We ALWAYS focus on the negative stories and remember them. Even if 99.9 percent of the animals we adopt live wonderful lives we focus on that tiny percent who were failed in some way.

I have always thought that adoptions should be more of a conversation. There should be guidelines, but not hard rules. For example, many rescues will not adopt an animal to a home if another animal in that home is intact. Which is ridiculous. The animal being adopted is not intact so it isn’t going to be making babies. Why not ask why they have an animal that is intact? I have had intact dogs off and on for many years and will happily discuss why. And I have never had any of my dogs father a litter of puppies.

People living in apartments are also often denied. But that denial is sometimes based on not having a yard. Many people who live in apartments exercise their dogs far more often than people who have fenced yards because apartment dwellers HAVE to take the dog out for a walk. Instead, I would focus on whether the person living in an apartment is adopting a dog that might be a loud barker. Most dogs that get booted out of apartments get booted out for nuisance barking, rather than not getting enough exercise.

There are so many animals languishing in shelters and rescues. Older dogs especially are difficult to adopt. So, please carefully consider your adoption restrictions and ask if there can be more of conversations vs. hard rules.

Luckily, my friend lives in an area where I am familiar with some of the shelters and rescues, hopefully she will find a better reception with a different organization.

I am posting a photo of Skywalker who is now 10. He is still active and loves to run and go for walks, but he is also happy just sleeping on the floor.

04/13/2026

Trauma

We never know how it will affect us. That is also true for our pets.

I was in an accident this week. I was stopped at a light at the intersection of two highways. I was going east; I saw a semi heading south and realized it was going to run the light that was just turning red for that direction. So, I waited while he blasted through the intersection.

I congratulated myself on being so aware of my surroundings and proceeded across the intersection. The next thing I knew there was a loud bang and my truck started spinning. I felt the wheels momentarily tip up on one side. And then I was facing a completely different direction on the highway with the side airbags deployed and my hand clutching my dog Skywalker who had been on the floor behind me. It turns out a vehicle had been following the semi and they did not know the light had turned red so they kept going through the intersection and hit me.

I sat there totally stunned and then people were rushing over asking if I was ok and opening my truck doors, which caused me to panic even more because Skywalker was loose in the truck and animals often bolt during accidents. I was asking people not to open the doors until I got my dog, but no one was listening. Luckily, Skywalker crawled up across my lap and was licking my face.

Skywalker and I both walked away uninjured, but I was so stressed out I was basically unable to make decisions. I just sat down and started crying. The police came, people kept asking if they could pet my dog, someone gave me a bottle of water. My brother came and picked me up as my truck had to be towed. When I got home, I realized I did not get the name and insurance information of the people who hit me. Literally the ONE thing (after calling 911) you should do after an accident is exchange information.

My brain could not make good choices due to the stress of suddenly having a vehicle hit me from what seemed out of nowhere. It took almost two hours before I could begin to think more clearly.

Today was the first day I drove since the accident. I had to pick up a rental car. As I approached an intersection my hands started to sweat and I was looking in both directions and slowed down. The person behind me honked in frustration. I then drove a different way home to avoid intersections that had stoplights.

Let’s jump to Skywalker. He seems fine. He had no issues getting into my brother’s truck when he came to get me. But yesterday I was setting up a new robot vacuum and Skywalker suddenly became agitated.

I got the robot out of the box and plugged it in. Next, I was going through the steps of having the app on my phone talk to the robot and then talk to my Wi-Fi. Suddenly Sky literally jumped onto my lap (all 75 pounds of him) and was shaking. I asked him to get off and he clung to me and licked my face. He got off and was whining and getting low to the ground and then he started pawing me. I asked him if he wanted to go outside but that wasn’t it. As soon as I sat back down with my phone pointed at the robot he got agitated again and started clawing at me and raked my arm with his toenails.

I got so frustrated with him! I just want to set up the damn robot and my dog is freaking out.

Then I remembered why I was setting up the new robot. The old robot had stopped talking to my Wi-Fi. During the hours spent with tech support trying to problem solve it, the pairing noise between phone and robot made a high-pitched beep like a smoke detector and Skywalker is super stressed by that noise. I had to put him outside while I worked on the old robot so he wasn’t so stressed.

I gave up on the old robot after finding out there was no fixing the issue. But a month passed before I got the new robot and set it up.

I totally forgot about Sky’s issue with the robot vacuum.

The new vacuum was a different color and a different model but shaped the same. And I was doing the same thing, looking at the robot, looking at my phone and then pushing buttons on the robot. Skywalker remembered this series of behaviors produced a noise that scared him.

Even though the new robot doesn’t make that noise (it has a pleasant chime) Sky was still stressed out. I put him back outside while I finished setting up the robot.

A person might say my stress of going through an intersection in a completely different vehicle is irrational just as someone might think it would be irrational for Skywalker to be stressed by a completely different robot vacuum.

So, listen to your dog if he is trying to tell you something important vs being frustrated with him and if the person in front of you hesitates to go through an intersection give them a break as well.