Dylan is too friendly with little kids, humping issues, help!

Dylan tries to hump small children when they visit. I have to keep him on a lead. He is lovely with them other than this and will play etc. I keep him on a lead but would appreciate some tips please as it's rather awkward keeping him on a lead when I wanted to hold the baby today. Dylan has had only good experiences with children. He isn't castrated and nor do I plan to get him done, which I expect some of you to mention. I'm good with training and would like to take this route. When dogs do this to each other, the dog being humped would put him in his place but of course the kids don't and in fact, don't always notice what Dylan is doing.

I saw a program about dogs doing that,and they suggested geting a water pistol,or something that will squirt water ,then when it begins squirt and shout NO.Perhaps try that.

I'd not advise using a water pistol -- I know some trainers advise this but many others do not especially in a situation like this, because it just ends up giving very negative associations with the activity and as it is associated with approaching kids he could well end up reactive to the KIDS instead. So this is potentially very dangerous to do in this particular situation.

Unfortunately, this is a common issue with unneutered males and one of the main reason people do neuter them before this even starts or as soon as it starts and before it becomes a habit, at which point it starts to get difficult to stop it -- and is one of the harder things to try and train away from in a dog that really likes this behaviour and chooses to do this with really unacceptable 'objects' like children (as opposed to legs or toys or pillows or other dogs). You may instead need to have him confined when small kids are around -- and at least til you can work on training, will really have few choices except to do this. He needs to be trained well enough to immediately do whatever you ask on command so you can give him other things to do besides humping -- but he is likely going to always see children as targets if this is already an ingrained habit now. If he does regularly target children as soon as he starts to get excited from playing that means keping him on lead whenever there are children around. You probably won't be able to train him *not* to at least try to hump them but you will be able to train him to obey you and stop the behaviour -- which means you always need to have him under control at your side when kids are around. I'd suggest getting in a trainer to work on this as it can be quite a serious issue when kids are targetted.

Other training suggestions from the Library:

http://board.cavaliertalk.com/showthread.php?t=11986

That's a starting point but probably not a solution to halt the problem, just to manage it when you are actually there and can intervene.

Thank you for your advice. I'll take a look at the link now