What follows is for biological purposes only. It is not for the puritanical, and it is definitely not for children to watch.
Free roaming dogs tend to be very different in their mating behavior.
Here are some dogs in a developing country. I don’t know where, but in many developing countries, you have legions of dogs roaming around. When a bitch comes in season, the dogs show up.
Notice how little aggression exist between the male dogs in this video. It’s very different from the miniature pinscher video I embedded a few days ago. Aggression and dominance displays are not seen in that video. In fact, that’s one reason why the bitch is in so much pain. She’s being jostled around during the tie. That’s also why you should never have a ton of male dogs hanging around two mating dogs. (I thought that was an obvious rule, but I guess not.)
There are no pair bonds here. It’s just mating. The bitch wants inseminated, and the dogs are all volunteering.
Now compare that video to this one of some wolves:
There is aggression even during the tie. The dog wolves fight very hard over the bitch.
The reason for this difference in mating behavior is that free roaming dogs and wolves have very different social structures. In free roaming dog society, males tend to form groups. They don’t generally form pair bonds with bitches.
When a bitch comes into season, one dog will mate, and his companions will hang out nearby. When the bitch becomes available again, one of them might get a chance to mate. No pair bond exists here, and no dog gets status by being a breeder.
This is why so many litters of free roaming dogs vary so much in appearance. Most litters have multiple sires, and for a wolf, this would be unacceptable.
However, the higher level of social tolerance in domestic dogs has fundamentally changed their mating behavior.
Now, I’m not saying that if you put a bunch of strange male dogs together with a bitch in season that you won’t have issues. You will.
But among a community of free roaming male dogs, you don’t see a lot of fighting over bitches in season.
This is definetely one way that wolves and dogs are VERY different! You will often find such breeding differences between domestic and wild animals. The use of the saying, “they’re behaving like ANIMALS!” regarding promiscuous or deranged sexual behaviour in humans has always irked me, as most wild animals(there are always exceptions, of course…) have quite strict and often incredibly controlled breeding behaviours, but this is often bred out of domestic animals. Perhaps the saying should be, “They’re behaving like DOMESTIC ANIMALS!”, which most of us humans are, after all, quite domesticated!…….
I don’t know whether it’s been bred out, or there simply is no need for pair bonds in domestic dog society.
Farley Mowat wrote the wolves were monogamous (they are serially monogamous) but that domestic dogs had picked up the human habit of promiscuity!
…..and you might find some of my experiences with breeding behaviour in wolf hybrids interesting–none that I knew were ever as promiscuous as other domestic dogs(although occaisionally, some domestic dogs can be very choosy! I knew an Irish Setter once that REFUSED to mate with various purebred studs provided to her, as well as rejecting all neighborhood dog advances, except with one mongrel, much to the owner’s dismay! And this was repeated during several different heats! The owner finally gave up and had “Brandy” spayed!) All my wolf dogs were very choosy(I never bred anyone, but dogs in heat roaming around were always present to observe reactions)–I have seen female dogs in full heat propositioning my male wolf dogs, and they were ignored. My oldest wolf hybrid male fell madly in love with an English Redtick Coonhound, and tried mating with her whether she was in heat or not! Seperated from her, he would howl for days, and even refused to eat. Years later he did the same thing with a very Dingo-like neighborhood dog, even though he was neutered at that point! But he ignored many another female in heat. His own parents were mated by the breeder because the ones he chose to breed(both very high percentage wolf crosses) would not mate, even though they lived in the same compound together–the female wanted the more dominant(also higher dog content) guy in the NEXT pen! The breeder finally gave up and put them together to have a litter(my pup was the rejected runt that no one would buy–he grew up to be a splendid, faithful animal). Also, one female hybrid that I aquired from some owners desperate to get rid of her came in heat a lot quicker than I figured. She immediately dug a den ten feet into a bank getting ready for pups! She boldly solicited my male, who luckily had zero interest in her for a mate, and I was able to get her spayed before she had a litter(I DID NOT want to try to find homes for a litter of wolf dogs! I’d have probably been stuck with them all!) This female would have NOTHING to do with neighborhood dogs that obviously smelled her and came around hoping for some action. Definetely different behaviour from what you would expect from typical dogs, and my animals all had a lot of “dog” in them, too.
The wolves in that clip are confined.
From what I’ve heard, wild wolf coitus does not involved that kind of conflict. The question of of who mates with whom has been settled well before the time comes. I’m not sure how cramped or artificial the situation is for this particular group of wolves, but my guess is a lot.
My bitch Pip, taken to a stud dog’s place for breeding, would refuse to stand until the resident dominant and snarky bitch was confined out of sight. She knew full well that Meg would take advantage and pile on her when she was helpless. She’d tell the stud to go get bent until Meg was out of the picture. Shooter was Meg’s mate in the social sense as well as the biological sense, and this dynamic came as no surprise to anyone.
For her second litter, there was an adolescent bitch belonging to the stud owner who fell in love with her. Pip would happily tie while Nanny hung around, and while both dogs were tied Nanny would solicit each with active submission displays, very happy, and was received graciously by both of them. Normally I wouldn’t put two dogs together with a third one around, but there was clearly no problem here, and it was more like the descriptions I’ve seen of wild wolves mating.
I’ve had bitches go into estrus while I had multiple neutered males in the house. Three out of four of the males have been able to tie with the bitches. The fourth had few opportunities and was not yet comfortable in this environment, so I never saw him try. Surprisingly, no conflict over the bitch, but the pair tends to sneak away somewhere private. The lower conflict may reflect the reduced testosterone levels of the neutered males — but they have enough on board to function sexually. These are not low-conflict dogs generally, they were not in a pack situation that I considered stable yet, but there was no fighting during the bitches’ estrus.
There was certainly none of this mounting while the two animals are tied that we see in the first clip.
One odd thing in both clips is how incompetent the ties are — animals falling over, getting twisted up, unable to get the dog’s leg over the bitch’s back. That’s the reason for all the drama. I’ve never seen that. There can be some yelling, especially with a virgin bitch, but I’ve not seen dogs that can’t calmly get into the butt-to-butt position for the duration of the tie.
The male golden stud dog we used showed no aggression whatsoever to the Tom, Dick, and Harrys that showed up at our place. He had been brought in on a leash, but I remember letting him go out to urniate, and all he wanted to do was play with the local crew (who were all smaller than he was and were keeping their distance).
Our female golden wouldn’t mate while being watched. You had to let them get together where they thought you weren’t watching. She was one of those dogs with a very strong mate preference. She went into her first season at 8 months old, but she wouldn’t tolerate a male Norwegian elkhound. She also refused a show-type golden stud, but she would mate with this particlar golden with whom she had played and swam. She was very strange in her heat cycles. She came in season every 8 to 10 months.
There were some great puppies out of that litter. I wish we’d kept the darkest male. He was retrieving at 4 weeks of age!
I expect that you’ll find there is a fair amount of variation on this.Compare the NG video to this one of wolves mating
My own experience with Belgian Sheepdogs is that you can get both types in this breed — those who won’t tolerate “interlopers” and those that don’t care.
vr, Peggy Richter.