Training Your Dog Not to Jump
| Hits: 2153
One of the most common problems you might have is your dog jumping on guests as they come over to your house. The good news about this behavior is that most dogs will only do this out of sheer excitement, and after a few minutes, in most cases after the excitement is over with, the dog calms down. So for the most part it is really all about getting past those first few minutes. The great part about training this behavior at the front door is that once this is trained, you can use it in other parts of the house to keep your dog from jumping on counters and coffee tables.
When you see any problem, you need to see if there a chain of events that happen that might escalate the animal’s excitement level and even make the dog more out of control that he already is. This way you can be aware of behavior patterns as they start to develop. Let’s start with your dog jumping on guests when they come in the house. In trying to understand this behavior, you need to know what’s going on in your dog’s head at the time that all this happens. When we are dealing with a dog that wants to jump on guests, there is almost always the same behavior pattern that happens prior to the dog even jumping on the guests. The escalation is the key here. Here is an example:
- The first thing that happens is the dog will hear the guest come to the door, and most of the time, he will hear this long before you do. This gets your dog excited.
- The guest will knock at the door or ring the doorbell. This sounds gets your dog even more excited.
- At the time your dog hears this he will probably run to the door and possibly begin to bark. If your dog is really excited, he might even put his feet on the door. This action creates even more excitement in your dog.
- You will open the door, and once your dog sees the guest, your dog’s excitement level will increase to whole other level.
- The final result is the dog jumping, and possible barking, because he wants to get as close as he can to the guest.
As you see by this whole escalation process, you can see where all this energy comes from, and why this is really one of the most common of all the behavior problems. Although this may be one of the most frequent ones, I have helped hundreds of thousands of pet owners get rid of it.
On this website I talk a lot about the completion of the bad behavior always being a reward, so let’s take a look at the dog jumping on guests. If the dog is able to jump on the guests, remember that the behavior of jumping on the guests is in itself the reward, so we are going to focus on two types of training:
- We are no longer going to give the dog the opportunity to be loose in the house once a guest comes through the door unless the dog is on a leash. This will no longer give the dog a chance to complete the behavior. This will involve PREVENTATIVE TRAINING.
- We will also teach the dog that if he is in the house when guests come over, that he will always have a leash attached to a collar or CHAIN COLLAR, and be corrected for jumping on guests. This involves CORRECTION TRAINING.
THE CORRECTION
When we are giving a dog a physical correction it’s very important for us to send a clear message to the dog what exactly he is being corrected for. And the only way to do that is for you to understand what you are correcting the dog for. When you understand what you are correcting the dog for, he understands what he is being corrected for. In many cases, some trainers will tell you to correct the dog for putting the feet up on the guest. That’s great, but I want to correct the dog for the thought. Just like in the previous behavior for the dog running out the door, there was an exact moment where he was corrected. It was for running through the threshold of the door. With this behavior problem, there is a thought that goes through your dog’s brain that makes him want to put his feet up on the guests. It is essential that you correct your dog at that exact time. And that exact time is just as he raises his feet off the ground to put them on the guests.
