After some advice before I take the ‘nuclear option’ of stopping greetings all together with one particular beloved friend... Wilson is 10 months old now, a big strong boy and very excitable as per the typical adolescent Lab. He is fortunate to have an adoring fan club of elderly people in our close. We’ve worked on not jumping to greet with good success where I don’t have to hold him to greet guests anymore to prevent jumping and is allowed to greet free range if that makes sense. However there is a very old woman who is besotted with Wilson and he adores her in return. The issue I have is she crouches over him to greet (her stature generally) rather than standing tall which encourages him to jump up at her, and she exclaims gleefully when he does - all of which is rewarding to him. We’ve reached the stage where he only jumps at her and thinks it’s acceptable. Her memory is a little challenging so it’s despite me trying to train her to prevent this, these instructions seem to be forgotten. She also isn’t quick, so our usual training approach for sit and stay sat to greet doesn’t work so well as she can’t step back very quickly to remove the reward of her being near. It’s a matter of time before he hurts her and I’ll never forgive myself so I must fix this. I’d hate to prevent him from saying hello to her as she gets so much joy from him. We basically have to pin him down for her to say hi which just escalates the situation for him increasing stress. I’m thinking of training her and him with a simple flat held out palm at her side, thigh height and him doing nose touch to this as ‘Go Say Hello’ as a special greeting for just them as an alternative. Does anyone have any suggestions for greeting methods for an excited young Lab to meet a dear old lady? If the answer to keep her safe is we prevent greetings, so be it, but I’d like to know id tried every sensible option before I take this away from her until he’s much older. Thanks in advance Jess, Wilson and the old lady who lady at No.1
