I have a 9 month old black lab and whenever someone comes over he jumps all over on them and goes crazy. Tried the treat thing but he does not care about that at that point. He does it expecially to women.
Hi there. It might be good to give us a little more information about what you have tried. I'm not sure exactly what the "treat thing" is that you have tried. So a little more info would be great. Labs are big, friendly dogs, and it is often difficult to stop them from giving visitors a very enthusiastic greeting - as you say, jumping all over them. One of the best pieces of advice that I was given on this forum is this: it is often hard to teach a dog NOT to do something, but much easier to teach a dog an alternate behaviour to do instead. So standing at the door and trying to stop your dog jumping all over a visitor with a constant stream of "down, down, DOWN!" commands is likely ineffective. However, think about what you want him to do instead. In my case (and he is not perfect, but much much improved from when we started) i am teaching him that when a visitor comes to the door he is supposed to sit and wait until they are in the door and have their boots off, or whatever, and then when he is release he can go and greet the person politely. So, the first step is the sit when someone comes to the door. First you have to train a solid sit without having the distraction of a visitor. So have this be a regular command, and use it often. Then you can try having him sit near the door, and increase the length of time you have him wait gradually. Then try having him sit, and then open the door (with no person on the other side), and then shut the door, and then release the dog from the sit. You see how you can break this down into small steps? This will be spread out over many days, with no progression until the dog is steady at each step. You can then use a helper and practice with them coming in the door (along with the doorbell, etc) . In the meantime, you want to set your dog up for success. So either you put a short "house lead" on him while in the house, so that when people come you can keep him from jumping up that way (by stepping on the lead or holding it) or have him in another room entirely. There are some other great ideas here in an article from the main site, I would recommend having a look. http://www.thelabradorsite.com/no-more-jumping-up/
Grand advice from Lisa , maybe I could just add a little ? You will need cooperation from your visitors too ! Sometimes, our visitors can unwittingly encourage dogs to become over excited by high pitched voices when greeting or enthusiastic fussing . I would ask that your visitors ignore him when they come into your home , no eye contact, no greeting at all, which I know isn't easy, but their help will eventually make a difference to his reactions x
It is a difficult one to teach a friendly dog What I do with Hattie & Charlie is send them to their beds with a treat when they hear the doorbell whether it's a visitor or a delivery man. I leave them there for a few minutes until excitement levels are down and then I tell them to "say hello" nicely. I find it works better this way for me and my dogs, most of the time! x
You already have such great advice here, all of which I have implemented with Harley. I am fortunate that every Sunday afternoon DH has a group of friends over and I am explained to them that they are helping us train Harley. At first I kept her on the harness and leash and would waiting until she was able to come out of that lab head space where every bell is ringing and light is flashing like when someone wins a prize at a casino, because that is what it is like for Harley. It is AWESOME to have visitors! And further I have asked them to please wait until she is calm (she can still be happy to see them, but just not manic) and to then come down to her level to greet her so that she doesn't feel the need to jump up to them. It is still a work in progress but the greeting is definitely improving.
Great advice already given. I was just wondering how he is when you greet him in the morning or when returning home. Does he jump up you does he sit and wait to be greeted? Currently when he greets a visitor he is in a state of arousal (excitement in this case) at which point no treat invented by man will have an impact on his behaviour - greeting the visitors is way better than a treat.
One thing I forgot to mention which also worked in that "inbetween" stage when I was starting to train, was to always turn by back on my dog and ignore him when he jumped all over me. This is one thing you can have your visitors do too. There are those who say this doesn't work, but I have found it useful.
This worked for me too, @Lisa - Coco was a jumping ogre when we got him. Consistent saying "off, turning away (and stepping away when he was biting too) did work (I remember the tears!). Coco now only jumps up at OH to greet him, which he encourages, and he greets me on all fours. He has stopped jumping at people in the street who speak to him now too, unsure how this came about, except for me saying "off".
The turn away does work and is one of the easiest methods to train. I've even had OH (who in all honesty is nowhere close to being a dog trainer - my dogs train him ) train this with the neighbours dog when it got into our garden. They were amazed that he had stopped Maisie jumping up so easily
I found the 'turn away' method never worked with Hattie, it just made her worse. All dogs are different x
