Hello! We’re Katy and Phil, and we have a 10-month-old black Labrador called Holly. She’s our first dog and we love her to pieces. Since we brought Holly home last April, everything has gone brilliantly and she’s very much part of the family. She’s completed her puppy training with the KC Good Citizen Scheme and passed her Bronze Award just before Christmas. However, a problem we’ve been having recently is with her jumping up at people. Although jumping up would have been less of an issue when Holly was smaller, we’re pretty sure it’s a behaviour that has become more pronounced recently. When we’re walking her off-lead (in areas that are used by a lot of local dog walkers for off-lead walks, e.g. parks, an arboretum and fields near our home) she will greet people by jumping at them. It’s usually people with dogs, in which case she approaches the dog first, but not always. What concerns us is that Holly seems to be aiming with her mouth for the face of the person she’s jumping up at. Let me be clear that there’s nothing aggressive about her behaviour: she’s never bitten anyone or even growled, she loves all dogs and people, and would do nothing more than lick. Unfortunately the people we meet don’t know this, and she can catch their lip or chin with her teeth without meaning to. A couple of times she has caused very minor injury (once or twice to us, once to her breeder during a training class) when doing this. We’ve tried dealing with this in several ways – punishment (a stern “no” and being put back on the lead; we don’t agree with hitting our pets), keeping her on lead, trying to avoid places and times when there are a lot of people around, even completely ignoring the jumping and praising her when she doesn’t jump at someone. We already keep away from places where we’re likely to meet children, and Holly doesn’t tend to react to joggers or cyclists. One obstacle is that the people Holly jumps up at respond in different ways – some give her a fuss and reward the behaviour, some push her off, some turn away (as we do), and a minority of people have screamed or shouted. We know how important it is to be consistent in training but the nature of the problem is preventing us from doing this. We’re aware that some people are frightened of dogs and would be very upset by Holly jumping (particularly if she’s wet or muddy), and that her jumping could have catastrophic consequences if she jumped at a young child, someone elderly or someone with a health condition. She could push someone over or even cause them to fall into water. A member of the public could perceive her to be dangerous or out of control – especially in view of our reactions when she approaches somebody, saying “No” and calling for her to come back – and bring a criminal case against us. It doesn’t bear thinking about. Friends and fellow dog walkers seem to think we’re blowing the problem out of proportion, saying she’s bound to be bouncy as a puppy and that she’s probably going through a ‘teenage rebellion’ phase. We certainly know other dogs the same age, some as big as Holly and others not, who do the same thing. However, this doesn’t stop us being concerned. Does anyone have any tips on (a) how to ‘untrain’ jumping up, and (b) how best to react when Holly jumps at someone and causes offence? Of course we already apologise, offer to wash any muddied clothing, and – if given the chance! – explain that she’s a puppy and we’re working hard on her training. Holly’s recall is generally very good, but can be overridden if somebody we meet has food! Our vet has confirmed that Holly is getting enough food from us, and she will usually behave much better for us if we have something tasty like sausage, although even sausage has failed to stop her from jumping up over the last few days. We’ve read the article on The Labrador Site about jumping up, and watched the video at the bottom, and while the information all makes sense we haven’t had much luck putting it into practice. Thanks so much for any advice! K & P
Re: Jumping up - please help! Hello and welcome to the forum! I think most of us have been where you are at one point or other.....people walking dog/in dog walking areas with WHITE trousers or pale coloured jackets....eek! I guess its more difficult to "un-train" things that have become a habit, but she is young yet. Training isn't really my forte, and hope some of the other members show up for some better advice. If it was me though, I would start with training closer to home. Have an "all 4 paws on the ground approach" for homecomings and such like, and reward this good behaviour, ignoring any jumping. And then I guess moving on to visitors coming to the house before taking the behaviour and training out to the garden, then out to public places. I think it will probably need some willing helpers that you have primed to behave in the way you are looking for. Using a clicker can definitely help in establishing good behaviours. I found it is mostly an issue if its someone with a treat that is worth mugging though. I do hope someone else can give you more specific help. The forum members are great at giving help. jac
Re: Jumping up - please help! Hello! A warm welcome to the forum! I'll let people who have successfully trained no jumping up in a keen, energetic young labrador to answer your question directly. I have a complete hooligan, who jumps up in an attempt to lick peoples' ears, not too badly now as I've managed to control the worst of it, but life is too short in my view to spend time making no jumping up 100% reliable (it's very boring to train). Plus, as a general rule, he is allowed to lick ears, so it's a bit confusing for him. In the meantime, I think it's actually easier to teach a dog not to approach strangers at all unless they are invited to approach - once they are all excited and expecting to get to say hello, stopping a young dog jumping up is tough, and some people don't mind and give them a cuddle etc. : Which makes it harder next time. So if we were on lead, he got a treat for staying walking by my side and ignoring people. If he was off lead, he got a treat for coming back to me and staying by me when there were other people around. These days, he pretty much ignores people unless they encourage him over. I had to start with a constant stream of high value treats while he was off lead - just loads. Bucketfuls of roast chicken! ;D If I stop to speak to someone who doesn't want to interact with him, I have a cue - which is my foot on his lead - which means "just sit down and be quiet". You need to be careful with this while they are still learning, because you need to get the length of the lead right if they still might jump otherwise you can end up with the dog in a heap as the lead stops a jump. Allowing people to fuss your young dog, without agreeing with them in advance what will happen if he jumps up, is the thing to avoid. Or, you can just make it clear to people who want to fuss your dog that he might jump up and then it's their choice. Best of luck with it.
Re: Jumping up - please help! Hello and welcome! I have two 5-month olds, Willow and Shadow. We're working on precisely the same thing. We're slowly making progress. I agree with Julie that teaching them to ignore strangers is a great idea. I do this, especially with Willow, who went through a stage of barking and lunging at certain people when on lead. Using a clicker, and advice from here, I would click every time she looked at an oncoming person, which would bring her attention back to me to get a treat. I'm teaching her she can look, but don't react to them in any way, and it's been marvellously successful. When off lead, I employ a similar approach. I do a lot of off-lead heel work with them, which is pretty strong, so again, if there's someone that catches their interest, I just keep them with me. If someone calls them over (generally a friend), there's a chance they may jump up, but I tell people that jumping up is not acceptable and to ignore them when they do it. It's slowly making an impact and they're both a lot less likely to jump up now, even when excited. I think you need to try to keep your dog closer and be firmer with people who encourage and reward the jumping up. I'm sure Holly will calm down a little as she gets older, but I've known older dogs who have jumped up their entire lives because they were taught it was a good thing when they were a cute puppy! Good luck and let us know how you get on
Re: Jumping up - please help! Hi and welcome Harley used to jump all the time so I understand where you are coming from. She will still jump on the occasional person (usually friends who come to our house). If she ran towards someone and it looked like she might jump I would shout and warn them. After a while I started to distract her from approaching people by using treats - this didn't work : her tennis ball obsession started around this time so I would get her to 'look at me' and if she did I would throw her the ball. This was when she was about 7/8 months old. Since then she rarely approaches people without checking with me and I rarely need to use the tennis ball You will get there
Re: Jumping up - please help! I have two, Gypsy (7 months) and Tatze (20 months) We still have this problem with Tatze, especially out and about when her paws are muddy : She is beginning to improve, but as soon as the person shows any friendly signs at all her paws are up. Gypsy is only 7 months and keeps her paws down. The difference in training is that Gypsy is a Guide Dog pup and must never be trained to put her paws up in any way - no 'give a paw' or 'high five' or paws on our knees - ever. This is because, if her owner is holding coffee etc, Gypsy must keep her paws down at all times for safety - as s/he won't be able to see her. The side effect of all this is that Gypsy was much, much easier to train to keep her feet down, as they are always down - no confusion.
Re: Jumping up - please help! Thanks so much everyone for your advice! And thanks also for such a warm welcome to the forum. (Took me a while to post a reply as one of my cats chewed through my internet cable, d'oh!) I'm going to try to go through all the points people have made: Four paws on the ground We already have this rule (in theory at least!). Holly has never been encouraged to jump up, even as a tiny puppy - no 'give a paw', no high fives, no paws on knees, and she's never been allowed on the sofa or on beds. When she gets a hug or a fuss, we come down to floor level with her. In fact, she's pretty good at not jumping up with us (indoors and in our garden, although garden training has fallen somewhat by the wayside over the winter...). :-\ If we have visitors come to our house then we tell them how to react, ignoring her/turning away when the jumps and making a fuss of her when she greets them appropriately. The problems start when we're out on a walk, Holly is off-lead and we meet a stranger who won't react in the same way as us and our friends. Clicker training I'd wondered about this, but it's not something I have any experience of. Would those of you who have used it definitely recommend it? I don't like the thought of relying on a clicker to get my dog to behave - what if I lose the clicker, what if I need Holly to behave and I don't have it with me? What if I decide I don't like it, won't it be confusing for Holly? Having said that, I've heard clicker training gives very good results and I know a lot of people swear by it. Maybe I need to research this more. Not approaching strangers unless invited I'd LOVE it if Holly didn't approach someone unless we invited her to! : She used to be better at this actually, when we first started letting her off-lead in places where there were other people. I think part of the issue is that Holly has grown in confidence since then and feels more comfortable going further away from us. She doesn't go out of sight (and she's brilliant at waiting for us before rounding a corner) but it's not unusual for her to be a hundred metres or more away from us. Is that too far? How can we change this - just keep calling her back before she goes a certain distance away, and reward her for coming back? As you say, very often the problem is that the person Holly approaches has treats (and, worse, is willing to part with them!). If they have food to bargain with she'll completely ignore us. Understandable I know, particularly given her age - I feel much better having read about other people's demonic 10-month-olds! - but frustrating nevertheless! Not allowing people to fuss dog without permission Maybe I'm not being assertive enough or trying to be too polite, but I'd find this really difficult! In our area (particularly the places we use, where there's a very friendly dog walking community) people always fuss each other's dogs without a second thought. It's interesting because now I think about it, it would never be that way in the street, but somehow it is in the park or the arboretum where we usually go. Off-lead heelwork We've done a lot of work on this and it's helped hugely. Holly will walk to heel perfectly when there's the prospect of a treat, but if we keep it going too long without a reward she loses interest. She'll heel beautifully to the end of the road, for example, but there's no way she'd do it for a whole walk unless I ended up using a whole bag of treats. It feels like a temporary solution rather than a permanent one. How to we persuade her to obey commands without treats when she's so motivated by food? (She's not overweight, by the way - she's actually very slender for a Lab so we could do more treat-based work if needed.) Shouting and warning people We do this wherever possible, but we're also conscious of striking a balance between giving someone a heads-up and terrifying them! I've found that people without dogs, or even owners of small dogs, don't immediately recognise Holly as a puppy, and I imagine a 10-month-sized all-black dog can appear quite frightening if you're not used to bigger dogs. Because Holly's a field line Lab many people don't think she's a Labrador either - one person even told us there's no way she's a Lab and we've been lied to! ??? Distracting by throwing a ball I like this idea, and it hadn't occurred to me. Holly is absolutely mesmerised by her ball/flinger so this might well work. That said, if we have the flinger with us then she only has eyes for it and is less likely to go and pester strangers - which in some ways is the solution to our problem, but at the same time it's nice to go for a walk without constantly throwing the ball sometimes! (When we have the ball Holly is practically glued to our feet, looking up at us and willing us to throw it. She knows the commands "go on", i.e. stop heeling and go and play, and "not now", but the ball is more interesting than anything else.) Perhaps investing in some new non-ball toys would be a good idea too. Of course that's a whole other thread! Thanks again for all your help. I'll report back with our findings!
Re: Jumping up - please help! Quite a lot there! You are not dependent on the clicker forever, you just use it to train a behaviour. There are articles on the site if you want to have a look. I think 100m is far too far - there isn't much you can do about her jumping up if she's 100m away from you... I think using your recall again and again to call a dog back from something it wants to do, or get to, is the quickest way to ruin your recall. You need to reward her for staying close to you, and paying attention to you when outside - with treats, toys and games. You need to do this all the time. Then slowly stretch out the time between rewards. You might have to start with a constant stream. It can take months to get a reliable behaviour if a dog has bad habits (like mine : ).
Re: Jumping up - please help! Yes, I would definitely recommend a clicker. I love it, and so do my dogs. They don't know whether I have it or not, and I also use "good" as an event marker so that if I ever forgot it, they'd still understand they'd got it right, but since the clicker is more for the early stages of shaping the behaviour, it does naturally get faded out over time. You can absolutely just use your voice as an event marker, and some people do this very successfully, but my two definitely respond a lot better to the clicker - it helps them understand that *that* is the exact behaviour I'm after, whereas I think my vocal marker sometimes gets "lost" as regular chatter. Note to self: stop nattering to my dogs so much. They don't care what I'm doing that day. For heel work, I vary the time between clicks so the dogs don't know when the next one is coming. Sometimes, it may be a minute, sometimes, they get a constant stream of three or four treats. This stops them breaking the heel as soon as a treat has been delivered. We're very much still a work in progress (at 5 months) but I can see the progress they're making and how I can now expect a heel for much longer than I could before, even without treats. It'll be a while (maybe a year or more) before I can expect them to walk to heel off-lead for an entire walk if I ask for it, without any treats. Most of the time, I'm happy for them to mooch around, within a limited distance of me. I also think 100m is too far; you can't expect to have any control over your dog at that distance - certainly not at this stage in your training. So, I'd work on a closer radius - maybe 20m, and reward her for for staying within that. Again, the clicker is useful here. Imagine that circle around you and, when Holly enters it, click and treat. You can throw the treat outside of the circle so she has to offer the behaviour of coming back into it to get another C&T. Or, stream the treats by clicking and throwing it to her feet for several times whilst she remains inside the circle. She'll soon get the idea. Easier to start off in a fairly enclosed area before you move it out to somewhere she can just belt off. Then, once she has the idea of staying closer, it's much more easy to keep her attention on you and treat her like I mentioned before for ignoring strangers. Good luck - let us know how you get on
Re: Jumping up - please help! Hi, a fellow 10 month old lab owner here too! I have been reading this thread with interest!! Maisie has always been very good at not jumping up at people, and still is in all sorts of situations, like people visiting, on lead, etc. In fact she ignores most people and isn't interested in being fussed! However, if there is the chance that food may be around she is a complete nightmare! Over the last few weeks her running up to people that look like they have dog biscuits, or the like, has increased and is now becoming a problem on our off lead walks. Today, I let her off lead and she was just trotting along in front of me and then she spotted a lady in front of us. What I didn't know, as she had her back to us, was that she was breaking dog biscuits up to give to her dog. Maisie could clearly smell/hear biscuits and that was it.....off she shot and jumped at the lady from behind before I could get hold of her, oh lord Fortunately she did not hit her with too much force, but it could have been worse. The lady was not impressed. We have had similar situations over the last few weeks. So, tomorrow, I have decided that she will be need to be kept on lead until we are clear of any potential food sources! I hope that that is the right this to do. For the rest of the walk she was brilliant........recalling from other dogs, fox poo :, ignoring cyclists, joggers, etc. A delightful puppy! I just hope that this is a teenage blip and she will grow out of it, I hope?
Re: Jumping up - please help! For people with food I think you need set ups. You need someone with food and proof and proof and proof. I don't think they grow out of running up to people with food, no....
Re: Jumping up - please help! Debs, I know you describe a horrible situation with the lady walking in front of you, but I have to say that "For the rest of the walk she was brilliant........recalling from other dogs, fox poo :, ignoring cyclists, joggers, etc. A delightful puppy!" sounds like a wonderful situation to be in at 10 months and you must be doing something good with Maisie's training! I would love for just a couple of those recalls to happen on each walk... Natalie
Re: Jumping up - please help! [quote author=JulieT link=topic=9362.msg135265#msg135265 date=1420576205] For people with food I think you need set ups. You need someone with food and proof and proof and proof. I don't think they grow out of running up to people with food, no.... /quote] Good idea Julie, I'll have to think how I can do this.
Re: Jumping up - please help! [quote author=leejane link=topic=9362.msg135267#msg135267 date=1420576326] Debs, I know you describe a horrible situation with the lady walking in front of you, but I have to say that "For the rest of the walk she was brilliant........recalling from other dogs, fox poo :, ignoring cyclists, joggers, etc. A delightful puppy!" sounds like a wonderful situation to be in at 10 months and you must be doing something good with Maisie's training! I would love for just a couple of those recalls to happen on each walk... Natalie [/quote] Hi Natalie, I have been really lucky with Maisie's recall, she responds to the whistle really well, not sure how much is due to my training! The jumping up at food is a real problem....see my thread "and then I spotted a lady with a sandwich"!!!!
Re: Jumping up - please help! Debs, Haven't read your other thread but yes, I get the jumping up at food every night in the kitchen! On the one hand I'm so glad that I know food will always get him to drop whatever he's holding, or behave and sit, on the other I hate relying on it so much to reward / shape every tiny bit of behaviour a hundred times a day. I also hate that my hands often smell of dog biscuit and every pocket has a piece of kibble in it. I too had a lovely whistle once, then it got eaten... Natalie
Re: Jumping up - please help! [quote author=leejane link=topic=9362.msg135287#msg135287 date=1420579120] I also hate that my hands often smell of dog biscuit and every pocket has a piece of kibble in it. Natalie [/quote] I think every pocket I own is full of crumbs and smells somwhat, all my trousers have holes in the back pockets where she's nibbled at them and my rain coat, well it no longer has pockets!!!
Hi snowbunny I know this was an old post, but it’s great, I’ve been trawling the forum for help with Bonnie running off to strangers. She’s still using her teeth at 9 months, it’s such a worry. I’ve now lost lots of confidence with her. Up until Easter I was walking her through the forest quite happily and putting her on the lead if I spotted a distraction, but now I’ve got into such a state that I’m terrified of letting her off. She’s had several weeks of lead walks due to a long season, and now I’m really worried about her biting someone. I’m going to work on your tips. Thank you. In the meantime I guess I’ll keep her on the training line, but the darn thing keeps getting tangled up, I think I need more practice. Also, I think I need to read “total recall” again and start roasting more chicken!!! Thanks
This is me!! Our Bonnie is 9 months now, just out of a long season, and I read your post (I know it was years ago). How did things go? Your post is so much like my situation, I’d love to know how things worked out for you? Is there light at the end of the tunnel?
Hehe, well, just to confuse you, I don't use the clicker for training loose leash walking anymore. Not that I think it's no good, but it doesn't really fit with the way I'm training these days. Like I say, if you're not contradicting things you believed a year ago, then you're not moving forwards I would say, instead, forget about LLW and spend time investing in your relationship. Play games that build value in being close to you. You could use a trailing long line on a harness if you're really worried - but be really careful because they can get tangled so you have to concentrate the whole time. Unclip her, play some really good games like ping-pong recall (throw a nice big chunk of food in front of you, once she's eaten it and turns back to you, use your clicker or marker word and then turn and bowl another chunk in the opposite direction, so she's travelling past you. Repeat about ten times and on the last time, feed her at you). Once the game is over, clip the lead back on and give her lots of rewards. Or scatter feeding - unclip the lead, say "scatter!!!" and sprinkle a whole load of treats around your feet for her to sniff out. Or toys with a chaser tug if she's toy oriented. Basically, anything that gets her thinking "yay, the lead has come off, I'd best stick around because there's going to be some fun!!!!!". Games like this build a real value in proximity to you which will really help with leash walking, off leash attention and recall. I hope that's not confused you too much
That’s really helpful, proper solid advice. Thank you very much! I will work on games in v close proximity to me, she such a lovely girl I so want to crack this worry, thank you
