Jumping on people, whether it be at the door when visitors arrive, out on walks, or just about anytime, is one of the top three or four complaints I get from clients. Jumping up is a very common problem and solving it can be very frustrating.
It’s important to keep in mind that dogs jump up because they want to greet people. They jump to get our attention and/or to reach our face. It is not a dominant behavior, regardless of what some say. As a matter of fact, in doggy etiquette a face-to-face greeting frequently involves licking the lips of the other dog to show appeasement. Harsh corrections risk changing a happy reaction to meeting people into something much more undesirable.
Here is a list of five steps you can take to put a stop to jumping on people. Your solution will probably be a combination of these steps, not just one and certainly not all of them.
- Calm down – We frequently react to jumping by raising our voices and pushing the dog away. Doing this actually increases the intensity of the situation and makes it worse. Your best bet, regardless of which of the other steps you take is to calm down. Not only are your attempts to get your dog to stop reinforcing the behavior (she is seeking attention and getting it), it’s also possible that they feed an already anxious dog’s excitement level. Set up practice sessions so you don’t get so upset and try to act as even-handed and calm as possible.
- Ignore it – ignoring jumping up is frequently recommended, but rarely seems to work. There is a very good reason. Most people do not really ignore the behavior. They make exceptions (or excuses) for some situations, such as for specific family members or locations. The goal of ignoring a behavior is extinction, but extinction will only occur when the behavior is truly never reinforced. If it is reinforced infrequently, the behavior will most likely get worse. I discuss extinction in depth here on Dog Star Daily.
- Train a rock steady sit – one of the best ways to remove an annoying behavior like jumping up, is to identify an incompatible behavior and train your dog to do that instead. Sitting is a great example – jumping up and sitting at the same time is very difficult, even for the more determined dog. In my earlier post on jumping up I discuss training sit as a greeting.
- Teach how to greet politely – maintaining a sit in the face of people is very difficult for many dogs. Instead of training a sit, you could training “Say Hi,” an alternative greeting that allows you dog to investigate the new person without knocking them over.
Here is a document on training this behavior. - Manage the situation – sometimes your best bet is to just avoid the situation, especially in the early stages of your training. Think of every time your dog jumps up as practice, and that she is getting better at it. If you are having visitors and believe that your dog will have problems restraining herself, manage the situation. Put her in her crate, close her into another room, or maybe keep her on leash. You can either introduce her after everyone has entered, or just keep her separated and avoid the situation altogether.
Look here more training tips and tutorials. Click here if you are interested in home or group class training.
2 Comments
Yep! Jumping up is high on the list of my clients woes.
Great list, I’ll add another if I may
My own dog Harley has a very strong social drive, and when he was a pup it was a real struggle to resolve the jumping up on guests, or while out walking because he was sooo friendly with it too. So the recepients of his jumping gave him lots of reinforcement saying “oh, but he’s so friendly.” Meanwhile I was thinking yeah but you wouldn’t be saying that if you were 80 and walking with the aid of a stick!
I made a quick judgement call and actually decided to put the behaviour on cue, as an intermediary step.
Now he will only jump up to greet if the individual says “up” and at the same time pat their hands on their chest. Once he’s had a sniff and a quick face lick he’s happy. So yeah I have friends who don’t mind so he still gets to jump up when cued.
Once I had the jumping up under control, I then worked on the sit. If not cued he will just stand and wag his tail then I’ll ask him to sit. Then I’ll ask the guest to cue a “give paw” a quick paw shake, and then he’s done.
For walks I’ve worked on a rock solid “leave” but now that he’s older he’s figuring out that there’s no need to greet everyone
It’s lovely having a dog with such a strong social drive, but it doesn’t come without its challenges.
@Angela: Putting it on cue is a great solution! It’s another cool way of dealing with a nuisance behavior.
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