Hi everybody! This video is on the topic of teaching your dog not to jump up when
greeting. To set your dog up for success you can train the greeting as a behavior
in training sessions rather than trying to train your dog in those real-life
situations where he's overexcited. So during your training process you might
need to use management and prevention where you prevent your dog from jumping
up on your guests or doing undesirable behaviors as you train your dog what you
DO want him to do when around guests and greeting people. "Are you ready Wishy?" So I
like to add a cue to this behavior, a verbal cue. "Wish free" But dogs can learn
situational cues but I like to give a release to the guests so if I don't want
my dog to meet a certain guest I can just not cue the behavior of going to
say hi. So I'm gonna say "Go say
hello" which is going to be my cue for saying hello to guests. So I'm going say
that cue, "Go say hello" and first I'm just going to mark and reinforce my dog for
standing in front of me directly and not moving her feet so I'm clicking and
feeding her for standing still like this.
"Go say hello" You can also choose to put the treat down in front of the person or
yourself like this if your dog takes treats hard when your dog is a little
bit excited. "Awesome" The next step is clicking and reinforcing your dog for
making eye contact with you. "Good" So basically you want your dog to station
in front of the guest and look up at their face.
"Go say hello. good, good, get it. Say hello. Awesome." If your dog
keeps looking at the treats in your hand you can check out my video on how to
train your dog to make eye contact with you using an attention noise. "Good job" I
like to train the standing position as the greeting position for dogs like wish
who at some point get a little bit overwhelmed with too much handling and
too much social interaction and she can easily back away. Where if I ask her to
sit for guests she might be less likely to be able to
tell us that she's had enough by simply backing away. If you have a
happy-go-lucky dog that's extremely comfortable with being handled you can
use sitting as the greeting behavior. So to do this you're going to say your cue "Go
say hello" and then when the dog gets to you
you're going to cue the dog to sit either with a visual or a verbal cue and then
you're going see if the dog might offer sitting before you say sit or give the
hand signal. So I'm going to throw the treat or you could simply feed the dog
and then walk away if you don't want to put treats down. Say "Go say hello" and
then "Sit", "Good" Now I'm going to show you a video clip of my friend Sarah Surritt
who's a professional dog trainer from Get Positive Dog Training who's training
a large breed dog not to jump up by teaching the dog what she does want the
dog to do instead of jumping up.
If your dog is comfortable with handling you can add handling into the greeting
behavior so after you've cued your dog go say hello and your dog is stationed
in front of you you can then start to handle your dog in the ways that guests
might handle your dog but first starting off with very calm and gentle
interactions so you might just have your hand underneath your dog's chin. "Good."
Mark and feed. The side of the face. "Good." If your dog is uncomfortable or gets
excited and jumps up when people bend over your dog you can practice bending
over and marking and reinforcing your dog for doing nothing. All these
type of interactions that guests do staring at your dog and petting them can
tend to make your dog want to jump up so by rehearsing all of these in training
sessions when the dog is less excited you'll be teaching your dog not to jump
up in these situations. "Are you ready? Good." We can teach our dogs to be calm
and confident through training in training sessions with the different
ways that people might handle and interact with your dog however in
real-life situations if you see someone doing something that's to over arousing
or your dogs just not feeling comfortable it's important to speak up
and ask the person to stop or move your dog away from the person. Splash my
border collie will quickly back up if she's not enjoying an interaction and
that's a really great sign for guests because they see it with their
eyes that the dog is actually not enjoying it but some dogs will stay with
the guest looking miserable as the guest rubs them obsessively or does something
that they really don't like. Another part of the greeting that tends to make dogs
want to jump up towards the face of the guest is the vocalizations that the
guest is making. Now you can tell your guests to stay calm around your dog but
sometimes that just a happen and they can become overexcited
by your dog and then start making lots of exciting noises that will tend to
elicit your dog to jump at their face.
Now when dogs make exciting noises it attracts other dogs to come towards
their face so naturally dogs are going to want to jump up if you make exciting
noises and seem excited yourself. "Are you ready?" So I'm going to say "Hi! Good"
Practice with helpers. When family or guests have been over long enough that your dog is
more relaxed you can practice all the different aspects of the greeting. The
approach, eye contact, handling, movement and speech. You will have faster results
training when your dog has had time to calm down than if you are always trying
to train your dog the moment the guest arrives.
"Good"
If your dog jumps up it means you need to lower criteria. Dogs can be excited by
eye contact, handling, movement and the voice of the person so reducing these
will get your training back on track. If you have taught your dog to be
comfortable with handling you can simply remove your dog gently as soon as
possible after he jumps up if your dog is not comfortable with being touched
yet he should not be put in the situation where he can jump up.
You can also interrupt jumping with a cue that you've previously trained with
positive reinforcement however if your dog is too excited he might be too
excited to be able to listen to you. So you could either call your dog away from
the guest, tell your dog back up "Wish back up good", you could cue your dog to
sit which is incompatible with having their paws up on you or ask your dog to
lay down. You want to make sure to take the appropriate safety precautions
depending on the size of your dog. WHEN GUESTS ARRIVE. If you have a dog that can become overexcited
when guests arrive you can set your dog up for success by either meeting the
guests outside where you can go for a short walk before the greeting or you
can have your guests ignore your dog and chat to you while you work with your dog
on the settle while on a leash at a distance your dog can relax.
WHEN GREETING GUESTS Mark and calmly reinforce every step you take towards the guest at first. If the dog
stops eating treats you can say let's go and move further away from the guest
where your dog can work on a settle. Then when your dog is eating food again you
can practice the greeting. If the dog is too excited to eat food he most likely
is too excited to greet your guests. MARK YOUR DOG WHEN HE LOOKS AT THE GUEST If your dog is too focused on you and the
food that you're holding you need to wait for the moment that the dog is
looking at the guest to mark and feed. This is because if he just stares at you
and the food he will not learn to not jump up when the food is out of the
picture and he's staring straight at the guest. It's important to understand that
no matter what you train is your greeting behavior and no matter what
your dog's personality is like that sometimes the greeting can go on for too
long if the guest is very excited about seeing the dog so it's a good idea to
give your dog a break from the guest, ask your dog to come to you or say let's
go and move away and then see if your dog wants to go back. And sometimes dogs
don't want to go back because they realize only at a distance that what was
happening was a little overwhelming. Also guests if they keep on going they can
make your dog too excited or conversely make your dog less interested in wanting
to say hi to more guests because the guests are just being too overwhelming
for the dog. So the best way to teach your dog to enjoy saying hello to guests
is keeping the interactions short and giving the dog a break in between saying
hello to guests. If you cue your dog to say hi to someone and your dog refuses
to say hi to them, it's important to respect your dog's decision. Perhaps your
dog isn't feeling very well that day and it's not really a good idea for someone
to be petting a dog that doesn't want this social interaction. "Hey Wishy" If
you have a dog that can become shy, fearful or reactive when being handled
by guests or greeting guests or even yourself it's important to seek the help
from a professional trainer that doesn't use any forms of physical or
psychological intimidation to help you with the training because you might be
raising criteria too quickly or not being able to read your dog's signs that
he's uncomfortable or feeling conflicted with the greeting and what you can be
doing is actually teaching the dog to not enjoy greeting guests. Thank you so
much for watching. I just want to give a quick shout out to one of my number one
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