Hi. My dog loves jumping up on people when they come into my home. he's being friendly but some friends don't like it. How do i get him to stop?
As trainer I would say that the quickest course of action is to train an incompatible behaviour. Some people advise standing and turning your back, others to have your pup on a lead and stand on the lead so the dog can't jump. I prefer to train a paws on the floor behaviour. There's a great video on You Tube by Emily Larlham (Kikopups) demonstrating the technique and it really works and works quickly. An alternative is to train a sit when people arrive or a popular activity with a Lab is to send them to fetch a toy to greet the visitors with. For some reason a toy in the mouth seems to make a jump very difficult . Which ever method you chose make sure that you have some willing visitors who will help you practice to establish the new behaviour. With paws on the floor any jump/lift of paws off the floor results in the visitor turning around and going back out the door. You would do exactly the same with the sit or toy retrieve. Our dogs quickly put their jump and the visitor leaving together together with being rewarded for the new behaviour. I recently trained a 5 month old Whippet pup the 4 paws on the floor and she had worked it out in 5 minutes. The following lesson she not only didn't jump but moved back from the gate/door so I could enter and also offered a sit and remained in a sit even when I did a dance down the hall
