Hello We have a lovely 14 week old Lab pup. We were after some advice about her jumping on sofas and low tables. We decided that when she's older she won't be allowed to sleep on our sofas or jump on them at other people's houses when she's muddy etc, so we thought the kindest way was to not let her do it from the start. But now we have a bit of a problem, it only really started in the last couple of weeks as she was too small to do it before that! We've read the tips on here and try to lure her off with treats when she does it but now she does it all the time and it's turning into a a bit of a battle - especially in the evenings. We can't really sit in our front room now after about 8pm as she just does it constantly and after a while gets bored with the temptation of treats and then gets snappy if we try and to get her off and then tries to bite us while we are sitting on the sofas! During the day she doesn't get grumpy and snappy to the same extent. Any suggestions? Should we maybe be putting her to bed earlier? Usually we put her in her crate around 11/12ish and then come down at 7am which seems to be working well for her overnight. She also now jumps on the coffee table all the time during the day as well, same thing, almost like a game only this time cups and plates get knocked off. so we're not putting anything on it but this gives her more space to jump up and then she lies down on it! Should we take the table out for a while or should we persist with offering treats to get her to jump down? Any advice gratefully received! Thanks
When my dog was that age she didn't have access to the front room. We had a childgate on the door, we also had a childgate on the kitchen door. She had bundles of access to outside plus the room with her crate in. We didn't want her on the sofa and it takes them a while to learn to settle. Everytime she was quiet on her bed when we walked past she got a treat, boring old kibble actually but it worked. I can't remember how old she was when we took the gates off, probably nearer 1, but she settled easily into the front room on another bed. It worked for us.
We are also struggling with this with our 12 week old pup. Unfortunately our downstairs is open plan so we can’t separate it off. We can separate the utility but we feel bad shutting her in there if we are in the living room.
Why don't you look to getting a pen for her? That way she is in the same room as you but also safe from causing mischief
We have a pen from safetots.co.uk that our pup spends a lot of time in so he is near us but not bothering our older dog. He happily plays with toys in there and rolls around and can move freely. We take him out for 5-35 mins about every hour now as that how often he goes for a wee.
We started with the best intentions to keep our Lab off the sofas and I’m afraid to say we gave up! Our downstairs is open plan also, so the area he spent the majority of his time in is our lounge and dining room that are joined. We didn’t use a play pen personally, just puppy proofed the room and trained for what new frustrating thing he decides to do each week! We are nearly at 8 months old now. We did initially teach and ‘off’ command (lure with treats, ‘yes’ when paws on the floor and reward) which he understood to get off when he jumped up on the sofa but we struggled to train an effective ‘boundary’ so that he didn’t get on the sofas in the first place. We did find that he wanted to be on the sofas to be sat or snuggled next to us, so putting a dog bed right by our feet helped so we could lure him somewhere he could be. As they say it’s easier to train a dog ‘what to do’ rather than ‘what not to do’. However, we found our evenings significantly more peaceful once we allowed him on the sofa to settle down next to us. We did train him to put a paw on the sofa to ‘ask’ to get up which gives us some control. We trained standard paw first, then evolved this to put our hand flat on the sofa before he jumped up and asked for paw, a ’yes’ and ‘up!’ when he provided the paw... the reward being getting to come up. Best of luck!
The issue is that dogs and people both enjoy sitting together and in contact with each other. So unless you all want to sit on the floor and no one gets to use the sofa, it is probably best to invest in some throws which can be washed easily and let the dog on the sofa with you. I speak from experience, being someone who ended up sitting on the floor with the dogs to the point that we wondered why we ever had a sofa at all... so decided to allow them on it. I think 'sofa time' is the dogs' favourite part of the day and everyone enjoys it... However, I would take care not to allow leaping on and off the sofa just for the sake of joint development. With pups, I always have them wear a puppy house line and keep hold of that if they get on the sofa so I can control how they get off (lift them down). I also put thick dog beds around the sofas so they land on those if they do jump off. With the coffee table, I would just remove that for now if you can.
Hi Jo We do sit on the floor with her but have had to stop that because at 14 weeks she has been a nightmare with her biting for a few weeks now. This is one of our main problems at the moment. She is struggling to understand that biting us is not an option, even if we use time out, get up or try to give her a toy instead. we normally pick her up off the sofa as to not let her damage her joints, especially as we have hard wood floors but stopping her jumping up is a different story. Our downstairs is open plan (except utility but too small to keep her in there all the time without get the crocopup treatment) so she just charges through and leaps up onto them before we can stop her if she is in one of her mad hours between 7-9pm I just wondered if the original poster had turned a corner or given up arguing with their pup It is likely that she will be eventually allowed to be on the sofa with us but at the moment she hasn’t learnt to be polite or calm on the floor yet so I worry about her leaping on and off and not biting people. We want to be able to teach her to only come up when asked (our last dog always settled on the sofa and never the floor which was always an issue when we had friends and family round) so we would like her not to expect it if that makes sense. We will keep ploughing on
