In New York City, not much raises an eyebrow anymore.

Guys dressed as girls? Must be taking Mom out to brunch. Same-sex couples making out on the park bench? You can see that in a VW commercial. Naked guy on the subway? Well, the A/C works in this car so we’ll just stay put.

Truth is, virtually anything that might have once been considered taboo in this town is most likely featured in a Broadway musical.

But in the city’s dog runs, many of our hairiest residents engage in one of the few acts you’ll see in public which can make New Yorkers uncomfortable: humping. Whether it’s fast humping, slow humping, hard humping or soft humping, there’s a chance that at least one pet owner will be none too happy about it.

Dog Humps Another Dog

On a crisp fall day at Madison Square Park’s dog run, dog couplings elicited a wide range of emotions. And of course there was a lot of hot canine-on-canine action, providing an opportunity to see the unedited response to this instinctive behavior.

Live and Let Hump

On the outside at least, most of the people in the dog run seemed unperturbed by the humping, and take on a “live and let hump” attitude.

“My take on it is that this is just what dogs do,” said Sue Levine, a creative consultant in advertising who watched with amusement as her “malty-poo” Tony made the moves on a much larger Doberman. “If you take your dog to the dog run, this is going to happen. I mean, all these dogs are fixed, and it’s not a sex thing anyway, it’s more about dominance.”

Levine’s acceptance of the act comes with a qualifier, and one that repeated itself over the course of the afternoon: Why should it make a difference if it’s just one horny dog trying to get his no-longer-attached rocks off, or an instinctive urge to mount and conquer? Those who seem comfortable with the act prefer to couch it in terms of dominance, perhaps to spare themselves the embarrassing prospect that it is indeed the alternative. After all, many pet owners like to view their animals as extensions of themselves, and in this day and age, it simply isn’t appropriate to go around mounting whatever catches your eye. As a result, the owner of the “top” is often embarrassed, as if the dog’s randy behavior reflects on themselves. Likewise, the guardian of the “bottom” can feel as if their dog — and as an extension, themselves — are victims of an unwanted advance by a stranger.

Prude Pooch Owners?

Attaching such human baggage to all of this might explain why some of the two-legged denizens of the dog run don’t seem to like all of this free and open dog-sexuality.

A younger woman stopped in mid-conversation to yell “Oh no!” as her beagle went after a shih tzu like a prisoner on a conjugal visit. “Stop it! Stop it!,” she yelled, with her dog, lost in the moment, ignoring her cries.

On the other end of the run, a Lab mutt went after a larger St. Bernard-type mix, and the middle-aged owner of the St. lashed out at his 20-something counterpart. “Will you please control your dog?” the St.’s owner pleaded. “He has a bad back!”

With both participants declining to go on the record (and the dogs not talking), we may never know if there really was a concern for the larger dog’s well-being, or if it was just unpleasant for the owner to see his pet “turned out” in such a fashion.

According to Stu Slackman, whose small terrier Daisy seemed uninterested in the humpish goings-on around her, a negative reaction sometimes says more about the owner than the dog.

“It seems to me that those who get most embarrassed about this … well, it’s horny, depraved men who are struggling against an oppressive upbringing,” Slackman said.

Whatever the reason for an anti-humping attitude, protesting it and actually stopping it are another matter. Most such canine encounters often proceed with the romantic background sound of humans yelling “Scraps! Come here!” It’s a puzzling gambit, and one that doesn’t really work all that well. After all, if you were in the middle of some animalistic tryst, do you think someone yelling at you would get you to stop?

Let it Be(agle)

Madison Square Park dog-runner Brian Fisher, who was supervising a gaggle of pooches for clients, might have the most logical view of the situation. Fisher believes you can’t stop it, and the dogs can take care of themselves. Much like a scene that will be repeated countless times at East Village bars this Friday night, when one of the potential humpees doesn’t want to buy what the potential humper is selling, a scowl and snarl is generally enough to send the suitor on his way.

“You can’t stop ’em, you can’t tell ’em no, they are dogs, and it’s just what they are going to do,” Fisher said. “These dogs are generally pretty smart, and if they aren’t interested in the other dog’s advances, they’ll break it up. They will work it out, and maybe all the humans around here shouldn’t be so uptight about it.”

So next time you witness a dog humping — and if you are at a dog run you won’t have to wait long — try to look past all of the emotional burdens that we humans carry around with us, and live in the moment. See it as what it is: a natural act that represents a wide number of things for the animals involved, who generally know better than we do whether or not it’s appropriate.

Dog humping is here to stay, and we all just have to get used to it.

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