Hello everyone! This is just a quick tutorial on how to train your little dog to jump into your
arms on a verbal cue. I’m going to be training Epic to do this because I really like to train
little dogs this behavior as a safety behavior for an emergency, say when the dog is loose
or you see something like a coyote coming out of the bushes you can cue your little dog to
jump into your arms and pick them up. Because most of the time when we're scared or worried
we come at our little dogs in a different way than they're used to which is in a panic,
running at them to grab them and guess what they do? They're scared and they run away
because they've never seen you act that way and you're like a tall giant. So the best thing to do
in my situation with my other little dogs I have asked them to jump in my into my arms
and then I can turn my back on say it's an approaching dog or whatever, rather than
see what happens. Okay so the first step is the dog getting used to being on your lap.
So if you have a super teeny dog it's really easy, you can just lure them onto your lap and
you can use a clicker if you want but you want to make sure to muffle it with some
poster tack or lots of layers of tape and I have a video in the description below on how to do that.
It's the one about clicker training and so that way if you do use a clicker
it's going to be close to your dog's ears and you don't want to punish them for going on your lap by
making a horribly loud noise. So this clicker is muffled but it's loud enough that you can hear it
and I’m going to lure her onto my lap like that mark and reinforce
and then I can mark and reinforce if she stays on there but she's found a crumb over there.
So if your dog is reluctant to go onto your lap you can first lure your dog onto a low mat and
then place the mat onto your lap. Some dogs are extremely polite and they don't want to trample on
top of you or who knows why they don't want to go onto you and you can first work on going to a mat
for a couple of training sessions before then getting onto your lap. So if your dog is reluctant
you can also just mark and reinforce just one foot going up onto your lap like that or eating
the treats off of your legs at first to help them build confidence. Another thing you can do
is be in a hallway where your legs are across the hallway and you're just throwing treats over you
so that the dog is using you as a platform to go over and get the other treats. Now I don't
like to begin this exercise with a really really young puppy that's going to be in a pet dog home
unless it's a teeny dog and you don't mind them just trampling you all the time or jumping up
at you, but I wouldn't train it as the first behavior. I would train some calm behaviors first
before working on jumping into your arms like this. So I have a little treat in my hand and
she's reliably jumping onto my lap so I can say the verbal cue "jump up", show her the
treat and then I’m going to mark and reinforce her multiple times for staying on my lap like that.
"good job" I personally don't like to use a clicker that much for this exercise because
I’m going to start to use both of my hands in a second so I’m going to lure her up onto my lap
saying "jump up, good" and then I’m going to feed her multiple treats. When your dog
is staying on your lap you can add a release cue like "free". So I’m going to say "Jump up,
good job good" and then I’m going to say "free" and then lure her off my lap like that and
reinforce her for waiting until I say jump up again. "are you ready? epic jump up, good good,
free, awesome that was very good" So if your dog is doing really well, you can start to incorporate
reaching and touching your dog. So if your dog is uncomfortable with this when not on your lap
you can work on first touching your dog like this
as you feed a treat, to get them used to it and then when they're comfortable with being touched
and eating the treat at the same time you can start to reach touch "good" and then feed a
treat so your dog is getting used to you just laying your hand on them like this because when
they jump into your lap you're going to then grab them like that. "awesome free good job" So I’m
going to say "jump up" and as I give her the treat I’m just going to hold her like this. "good good
good free" And I’m going to give her a treat for jumping off too.
Now with a young puppy, I wouldn't have them jumping higher than their ankles repetitively
so if you do this trick where you're working with a young puppy you can just pick them up and
put them down after they've jumped up into your arms or your lap as a behavior so that they're
not jolting their joints as they jump off of you. And you want to keep repetitions to a minimum, so
if they're enthusiastically jumping onto your lap as a young puppy repetitively then that's not a
good idea but a little bit like this amount of training once a week where you're doing
10 or 15 repetitions it's not going to make a big difference if they're just jumping a little bit to
get onto your lap like this. "good job" Okay the next step is pretending to have a treat and saying
the cue "jump up" "good" And there's no treat there and then you go and get the dog a treat.
She's like "hey wait a second I didn't get my treat" I might have the treats on this side so
it's easier to deliver them. "Ready epic, jump up, good" There we go that's better. "good job"
free, awesome" Now I’m going to go back and use the lure to get her onto my lap
just so that the behavior doesn't deteriorate if she starts to get
confused that the treat is out of the picture. "free, jump up, good"
Now I’m going to practice while I’m kneeling so I’m going to throw the treat over here so it's
easier for her to jump up and I’m going to say jump up and lure her onto my lap and then hold her
if she's ready for that step and she is like this. "good, free, awesome, get it, jump up, good, free"
So for my dogs part of the cue for jumping up is that I hold my arm out like this
and I say "jump up, good job" Now I’m squatting like this which not everybody can do but this is
what I do I bend down and sit like this to get my little dogs to jump up into my arms
but if you wanted to work to where you have your little dog jump right into your arms because
you can't bend over or if you're sitting in a chair and just get them to jump into the chair
you don't have to do this step you could just sit on a pillow or sit on the chair that you're
using and get the dog to jump into your lap. If you're stationary in a chair you can also raise
the ground in front of the chair to make the distance easier for the dog at first.
"jump up good"
"Good job, jump up good boy good, are you ready epic, jump up" She said "whoa that's really high!"
"ready epic, jump up, good" So in this situation
she's quite high up so I’m just going to put her down on the ground as I’m feeding her the treat
and it's a great exercise also for teaching your dog to be held so they're getting held
very briefly to be put down on the ground. So you have the treat, you're holding them, they get
a treat for you carrying them and then they play the jumping up game again. "good job jump up good"
So because I train my terrier Tug to jump up onto my knee like this is the first way to pick him up,
when I stand up completely instead of having my legs together like that as I squat down I
do this and have him jump onto this leg. I find that much easier to do than squatting.
"wait good boy ready tug jump up good" And then I can scoop him up and I got him. If you have a
little dog that's disabled or really old and you're worried about them jumping up
for example kiko her back legs aren't made very well so if I ask her to jump up "kiko jump" up she
can really only jump up this high, but perhaps you have a dog that has injury or pain in their body
you can cue them to go into a crate like this, zip it up and then if you need to put them in the car,
you don't have to pick them up, you can just ask them to go in their crate,
put it into the car buckle them in and then when they reach their final destination lift the crate
out and then cue your dog to come out. "kiko free" and sometimes she doesn't want to come
out because she likes it in there so much. "hey kiko?" Thank you so much for watching
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