Greeting People Without Jumping Up

When our dogs meet people, whether that be in the street on a walk or in the home when guest come over, we want them to be well behaved go up and greet people and get a love.

Greeting people without Jumping (in the home)

  1. If you know guests are coming over put you dog on a lead. This way you won’t set them up to fail.
  2. Arm your guest with treats.
  3. Ask your guest to walk straight over to the dog.
  4. If they jump up they have to walk away from the dog immediately.
  5. Repeat this process until the dog either has all four paws on the floor or it is sitting.
  6. Once step 5 has been achieved the guest should reward with a treat.
  7. Keep the dog on its lead for a short while after this has been achieved again to prevent them getting over excited and jumping up.
  8. When you eventually let your dog off the lead make sure to tell your guest to ignore the dog if it starts to jump up again.

 

Greeting people without jumping (out on walks)

  1. Make sure that you have lots and lots of tasty treats when you go out for a walk.
  2. When you come across a person start to slowly drip feed the treats to your dog.
  3. Allow they person to greet your dog stroke them etc. the whole time you are still drip feeding the treats as these are keeping your dog down.
  4. Once the person has stopped greeting the dog slow down the treat rewards.
  5. Walk off

 

Jumping up for dogs is self-rewarding as even if it is not received well by the person and they push the dog away or shout at the dog, this is still attention. While you are teaching your dog to have to ensure that the people greeting are never rewarding. Touch, eye contact and talking to them are all forms of attention even bad attention is a reward to a dog.

Ensure that all family members are being consistent with this as it can all go wrong quickly.

It is important that you pre-empt the jumping up and deal with it before it occurs. By allowing your dog to jump and then rewarding it for sitting, simply teaches your dog to jump and then sit. Telling your dog off for jumping up will also reward it as negative attention is as good as positive attention.