Hi, I have a 4 month chocolate lab who is learning very quickly! Her jumping up at family members has improved greatly but when I take her for a walk, she jumps all over everyone she meets. Excitement gets the better of her and she doesn't listen to me. How do I stop this?
Re: How do I teach my labrador not to jump up at strangers Definitely keep going with the "not jumping up" training and try to practise it with as many people as possible. 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. 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.
Re: How do I teach my labrador not to jump up at strangers I agree with this, we have had some problems with people encouraging Elsie to leap on them, so now we are getting her to just keep walking and only interact if we say it's OK. Other friendly people are the problem !
Re: How do I teach my labrador not to jump up at strangers I totally agree with the other posts.I do the same and have a treat ready when we meet people out on walks.I tell him, this way or leave it, if he tries to get to them.He's learning now I have the goodies not them so walks are less stressful.It is annoying when people just go ahead and pet them, like you say it's encouraging them and making them over excited.
Re: How do I teach my labrador not to jump up at strangers People who encourage your pup to jump up and make a fuss of them when they do are the bane of the young dog trainers life. Trouble is they are usually nice people
Re: How do I teach my labrador not to jump up at strangers [quote author=Mollly link=topic=8697.msg123133#msg123133 date=1415723876] People who encourage your pup to jump up and make a fuss of them when they do are the bane of the young dog trainers life. Trouble is they are usually nice people [/quote] How true Tina! I've worked really hard with Maisie not to jump up at people as we live very close to a school where there are lots of people and kids coming and going. I've done the "look at me" command when people are approaching and then treat. It works really well now and she mostly ignores people or just gives them a cursory sniff! Most people are really good and can see you are training, except the odd ones that insist on saying hello and then everything goes to pot! Also people that give treats without asking.....OMG! If she sees them in the distance, off she goes and jumps straight at them! in b
Re: How do I teach my labrador not to jump up at strangers I have gone for teaching my dogs not to interact with strangers at all on walks. They simply were not allowed to go and see anyone, ever from day 1 either on lead or off. This makes them appear very anti-social as adults of course, as folk often want to speak to a nice labrador and the dogs completely ignore them and run up to me instead. Quite a useful thing I found was when strangers wanted to call the puppy over was to shout "I wouldn't - she's been rolling in fox poo" - which put most people off pretty quickly. And, to be fair, was often near enough the truth....However, I appreciate that where I live and exercise the dogs, the issue with meeting people on walks would be no more than a few sets of people every couple of hours so pretty easy to accomplish. My technique for training "no interaction with strangers" was simply to make myself much, much more interesting than any stranger could be - ball on a rope, tasty treats, squeaky toy, etc only produced when a stranger was in the offing - and they quickly learned that seeing a stranger meant a swift return to my side would be very rewarding. And never, ever allow a stranger to feed treats to your dog - yell to them that he/she is diabetic! A side effect of the "no interacting with strangers" rule means you have to worry much less about them being stolen on a walk. We have had a few issues in the North East where dog thieves have been walking a decoy bitch in season and/or calling dogs over to them, as soon as the pet dog is within reach a slip lead goes on and the dog is raced away.
Re: How do I teach my labrador not to jump up at strangers Thank you, your feedback will be a great help
