a friend of my daughter has a 9 month old jack russel that is humping. mainly the man of the house but sometimes the kids too. They are thinking of getting him neutered. Is this likely to resolve the issue? Does anyone have any training suggestions to stop him? Is 9 months too young to castrate a small breed dog? I wouldn't neuter one of mine at this age but they are a larger breed.
I have never had a dog that humps things so not really sure how to advise.

Neutering will not help and the bigger the breed the later neutering needs to be done if that is what they decide.

They need to divert the pups attentions elsewhere or put the pup in time out. Many make the mistake in thinking it is funny at first and the pup is encouraged by their reaction till it then becomes a pest.

If you do a search on here this subject comes up regularly.

With a puppy so young castration is not the answer.  There are lots of posts on here that will quickly show you why dog people are horrified at that thought!

However, to your problem.  He's still a youngster, so easily distracted.  And I would be using distraction techniques, rather than telling him off for doing it.

My 8 month old very large breed does this which is much more annoying because he is quite stubborn and bullying when he gets going.  Luckily, it's not people only other dogs.  We have found that he does this during play when he is over-excited.  If we distract him with a titbit or take him away from the game, he stops immediately which works much better than telling him off.  When your friends dog starts humping, take him by the collar and put him out the room/company for a minute.  This would be enough to confuse and stop the behaviour and he will soon click that this humping gets him ignored.  I wouldn't say a word, just remove him.(not his bits and pieces!!haha).  It is learned behaviour that wouldn't change whether neutered or not.
Edited to add, our dog still does this behaviour occassionally when he gets all excited but now if I say 'Ahh', he looks at me with a slopy look and slinks off.  He knows it's not OK.  But it is few and far between and getting better.

Definately training rather than castration.
My dog went through a stage of trying to hump people (mostly me), very occasionally if he is excited he may have a half-hearted attempt now, but is easily stopped with a 'ah ah', it's no problem atall (4 yr old English Mastiff, entire)

For training, see if your friends can identify a trigger, it sounds strange but there may be a common 'thing' prior to the humping, with my dog it would be me on my hand & knees washing/brushing the floor!, he'd sneak up behind me, get his front half over my shoulders and start humping while sometyimes even chewing my head/neck Not funny being that he weighs in at about 14 stone, as I simply couldn't get out from underneath him I would have to get my OH to pull him off.

Rather than distracting for this, I would make sure I kept an eye on him when I was on all 4's! If he started to walk towards me, I'd tell him 'no'/'ah ah', if that didn't stop him getting closer I'd stand up and send him to his bed. Sounds really simple but it was all that was needed to stop the behaviour turning into a habbit :)

He does a bit of huming when over-excited playing with a doggy friend, for that a time out for him to calm down + a trying to get that time-out in before he starts the humping has been the best thing for that.

From the other side of things, my last dog was a rescue. He was entire when we got him at 4 years old, from a rescue centre. He had a very ingrained habbit for humping, unfortunatley we found it funny and even got him to hump anything on command. It seemed like harmless fun that the dog enjoyed, but when the dog was hanging off the Dr's leg (pre-natal home visit) humping the living daylights out of him and we couldn't stop him, only then did we realise how STUPID it was to encourage his humping :(
We got him castrated when he was about 6 years old as he'd also try to escape to look for bitches and after being run-over by a car, the castration was an attempt to keep him safe. The castration did stop him wanting to escape and stopped him pacing and whining over bitches, but it did NOTHING for his humping. We hd to train that out of him.

It's sooooooooooooooo much easier to train out humping when you get the chance to do it with a dog that has only just started the behaviour, than with a dog that has had years of practice & encouragement. :)

Just to say that I note several people mention excitement being an instigator.  I totally agree, and I believe people that don't have a lot of dog knowledge often see it as sexual, and probably a lot of dogs have been castrated for this reason alone!  :-(

My largest Bearded Collie is a bitch and was spayed years ago.  She has never had a litter, and didn't live with entire dogs until after her spaying.  So, as far as I'm aware, she has only seen the odd humpty from a male youngster.

Still, she can't have been paying attention, because she still doesn't have it quite right at 11 years old.  It is always when I am stood at the sink washing up, and I don't know why she finds that so exciting.  Her paws are placed on my shoulders and she humps away, but lacks perfection in her movements.  It always feels as if I have Tigger on my back, bouncing up and down.

> Just to say that I note several people mention excitement being an instigator.

Yep, even withour rescue dog, a game of fetch/tuggy, the kids running around and visitors were all things that would trigger a humping session.

I have read  that a dogs play is all about practising 'real life' skills, and even sexual behaviour needs practising so will be something that is 'practised' during play. Seems to make sense and also shows that humping when excited/playfull is not an actual sexual behaviour as such, just as play-fighting is not actual agressive beahviour (if you see what I mean?), they are just both things that, as are (potentially) needed in life, will be part of the play moves.

> It is always when I am stood at the sink washing up, and I don't know why she finds that so exciting.  Her paws are placed on my shoulders and she humps away, but lacks perfection in her movements.  It always feels as if I have Tigger on my back, bouncing up and down.
>

LOL, bless her :-D

> our dog still does this behaviour occassionally when he gets all excited

My nearly 5 year old bitch (entire mother of two litters) does it when excited, especially when some of the others are playing and she feels left out.

My ultra show girl does it to my leg/arm outside the ring just before she goes in! Its just extreme excitement with her and she often entertains other exhibitors by doing it on her Pedigree show bag.

My little boy does it when he's over excited as others have said.  i just distract him and sa ahha like mastiflover.  i don't tell him off as its a natural think for them to do.

He's done it from about from about 4wks old, asked about it then and was told could be a dominence thing/ finding his feet.  He's always on the floor with a girl on top of him so think he finds it amusing that he can do the same that way.

Another vote for over-excitement, and trying distraction / training techniques. I'm so lucky that my boys have never humped anything but other dogs (though Henry was always pretty indiscriminate about sex, lol).

I forgot to say only to his sister an the old girl ages ago. 

> I have read that a dogs play is all about practising 'real life' skills, and even sexual behaviour needs practising so will be something that is 'practised' during play.

That sounds about right to me - and thanks for putting into words something I've been trying to explain to myself (and others!) for a while :)

Thanks very much for all the replies I will feed this back to my daughters friend.

Sorry I'm late but I wanted to offer another opinion on the encouragement aspect.  My boy is nearly four, intact and has never humped anything other than his Poppa Bear.  Now, we started when he was 8 weeks old but encouraging him to hump just this one stuffed toy has worked for us.  At first Poppa Bear was bigger than him, he's a Lab, but now Poppa is much smaller and guess what?  Because of that humping is sort of self limiting.  Poor dog, I should video this, but what happens is, he gets Poppa in position and somersaults over top of him.  Poppa is washable and can be hidden in a closet when guests come.  Except I discovered the OH and his guests find Poppa provides a source of entertainment when I'm not home.

Just to add always found distraction a great tactic for this also, never had a problem funnily enough with any of the males, and only occasionally when a bitch was coming in out of season, may they get a little fruity with us humans, but my mothers terrier bitch was and still would be atrocious, if we hadn't nipped it in the bud, she would hump you anytime day or night,  if you were unfortunate enough to lay down and snooze on the sofa you would awake to find her humping your head. :-D

We made the mistake of thinking it funny to start with, (bad people, really shouldn't laugh) but it had to stop, so a quick oi and the distraction of come and sit on my lap or go and do something else instead, has always seemed to work with her, she very rarely will have a go now. :-)

I don't keep boys myself but I think having a "Poppa Bear" sounds like a great idea, lol ! :-)