Hi folks. We have a 1 year old chocolate lab who get extremely excited when netting new people. This can be either in our home or when we go visiting. We have tried to calm him down by ignoring him but he will continue to jump up, even sometimes mouthing through excitement. If anyone has any suggestions or has experience of dealing with this your thoughts would be greatly appreciated, thanks.
Re: Meet and Greet with much excitement from a teeny tiny black 5 1/2 year old Lab known as The DivaDog and her pet human
Re: Meet and Greet with much excitement Hello and welcome to the Forum from nine month old Molly and me. I have just the same problem. I am even dubious about letting her off the lead in case she pounces on someone, especially children in whom she seems to have an abiding interest. At my puppy class Molly and the other 2 jumped all over the trainer and he just said turn your back and ignore them. It was only the Labs that jumped up so I think it is something to do with the breed. It is something I would LOVE to get on top of. You cannot expect the rest of the population to turn their backs and ignore your prancing prat.
Re: Meet and Greet with much excitement Hi there, and welcome to the forum! I am not the best at giving training advice, but wonder if you have read anything on here about clicker training? Might be useful. Click and treat when all 4 paws on the ground only Or "mat training" - using a kong or tasty treat and associating a door bell with going to a specific place for the treat rather than the door to greet your visitors? What is your dog's name, and how is your other training going?
Re: Meet and Greet with much excitement A bit of a lab trait I think! Clicker training is good like Jacqui says. Also if you are expecting visitors, you can put her on the lead before they come, then you have control of her when the bell goes. Make her sit and ask them to approach calmly and pet her ONLY if she stays sitting. As soon as her bottom comes off the floor ask them to walk away and/or turn their backs, so she only gets the reward of petting when she stays seated. You can also do this when you go to other people's houses. If she is the kind of dog who likes to carry a toy around and present it to people, keep one handy near the door and give it to her to take to them. (Not tried this, but someone told me recently it worked for them)
Re: Meet and Greet with much excitement Thaks for the replies. I thought its a bit or trait too, his mum done it when we went to view him so its maybe a genetic thing. Saying that however its really concerning especially as he is around 35kg, it can be a bit daunting for people. On the training side of things he is great, can do all the basics (sit, down, stay etc). He has also started gundog training and is trained to obey the whistle (stop and recall). I have tried having him on the lead when people come over but he will be very restless and whine because he can't get to the person. I will keep persevering, thanks again.
Re: Meet and Greet with much excitement Hi and welcome When people come to our house I put Harley's (10 months old) collar on and get her to sit. At first it was really difficult as she constantly jumped up and was hyper for a good 15-30 mins, but after a while she takes 2-3 mins to calm down as she knows I won't allow her to greet guests until she is calm. Out and about has been harder.....if it's in the park, I give people her ball to throw as this distracts from the jumping. I also ask people to turn away and ignore her if she jumps, but not everyone does this! Keep persisting and you will get there.
Re: Meet and Greet with much excitement Yeah I tried doing this also, he will sit but again will whine because he can't greet the person. I will keep going until I solve this problem. I use a training line on him when we are out so that if he sees people and want to greet then I can step on the line and catch him before he gets to the person, this is working slowly, he is getting the message. Thanks for your help
Re: Meet and Greet with much excitement Pongo has the same problem - I'm sure it is a labrador thing. We got some (only some!) improvement by using a few friends / family who were planning to visit anyway - we asked them beforehand to be really strict when they arrived and not even make eye contact with him until he was four-feet-on-the-ground. It worked pretty well, although he is still a VERY long way from perfect (especially when lots of other exciting things are happening too). Rosie
Re: Meet and Greet with much excitement Yes it seems to be. It is very hard to create scenario so as to correct the behavior. Kids are especially tricky as excitement feeds excitement. I'm determined to conquer this problem.
Re: Meet and Greet with much excitement As the dog sits waiting to be allowed to any hello feed them tasty treats. Really tasty treats. Lots of them, one after the other, rapidly. Make sitting still more worthwhile and rewarding than leaping up. Gradually you will be able to increase the time between treats and still keep him sitting
Re: Meet and Greet with much excitement I have two three year old labs who are either very nervous and don't want strangers near or very excited with people they know. I use BAT (I bet everyone is getting bored of me banging on about BAT :) it does work though. The method it suggests for excited greeting when the dog is on a lead, so not sure if this applies to you but I think if you can get calm greeting on a lead it will help with off, is you start with some distance between you and the person your dog wants to get to. You start to move towards them. When the dog starts to pull, lunge get excited you stop turn and go back a few feet face the person and wait for the dog to calm and disengage from the person like looking away. You continue this until you eventually reach the person calmly. The first time can take awhile but it does work honest. : PS I should have said the reward for being calm is moving nearer the person. The idea is the dog learns to get what it wants, the functional reward, it needs to stay calm.
Re: Meet and Greet with much excitement Hi, when our door bell rings I tell Hattie & Charlie to "go to bed" I close the door over and wait a few minutes until they have calmed down, I then invite them out to say hello and this has worked really well, mostly no jumping up now. You could try clicker training for outside jumping up or ask people not to pay him any attention at all until he is sitting nicely x Good luck
Re: Meet and Greet with much excitement So yesterday we had a visitor, we decided to try a time out method and this how it went. Door goes - I put him in a spot away from door so as to give space to our guest, I told him sit and stay. Guest walks in and dog is soooooooo excited desperate to meet our guest but I keep telling him sit. This works well until guest sits down and dog decides now is the appropriate time to jump on her and give kisses. Time out 1 for that, I got dog and out hi. In kitchen using the word enough. After 5 minutes I let him out. Once back in our company he was much calmer and lay down when told to do so, gave reward for this behavior. Dog would occasionally go over to our guest but would still be excited and any touch on him by our guest he thinks its play time which heightens his excitement which then encourages him to try and hump. This again led to time out. Eventually after an hour or so our dog fell asleep which would never have happened before when we had guests. I think the time out worked to a certain extent, just the excitement and the humping which is still an issue. Any of you guys have any thoughts on this? Thanks
Re: Meet and Greet with much excitement Sounds great, well done The only thing I would change is to not tell him to stay. Have someone hold him on lead instead and just ask him to sit while giving him treats. The challenge of a visitor arriving is too great to expect him to respond properly and unrestrained to a stay cue and you will just end up wrecking the cue (meaning that he will ignore it more and more). Otherwise - great use of the time-outs. Really sounds like he was getting the message and also that it helped him to relax
Re: Meet and Greet with much excitement Yeah I suppose I was expecting a not much just asking him to stay. Maybe one day this will happen but until then I will continue to work on this problem. Thanks again.
Re: Meet and Greet with much excitement I have a similar problem with my two they get very excited when somebody comes luckily they don't jump up two would have you flat on your back, they just pace about wagging like mad. : Will he pick up a toy or something when asked ? When visitors come they tell my dogs to find their ropes. They happily shoot off to find them and bring them to the visitor. This doesn't necessarily calm them but it gives them something to do with all that energy, focuses their mind and they then have something in their mouth so they can't lick. Scott is a little devil for licking. My auntie came the other day with bare feet in sandals. Scott gave them a quick lick every time he passed. :. The visitor can, if they want, take the toy and gently toss it to be retrieved. Dog busy doing something good with the excited energy. What about having a kong already stuffed with treats you can give him or send him for ? Hopefully he will quickly realise the kong has food in it and turn his attention to that .
Re: Meet and Greet with much excitement The only other tip I'd add to what has been said is that I tell my visitors that they can a) greet my dog, in which case he will get over excited and lick their ears or b) they can ignore my dog. There is no half way option. They can't rattled their hands around his head, and say "Hello Charlie! Hello Charlie!" and then object to him climbing up their bodies and going for the ears. (He is always successful if they are sitting down, but not bad even if they are standing up). They can't make a big fuss of him for 30 seconds and then expect him to sit down - the fuss is an invitation for him to fuss back for 20 minutes (which he considers a minimum polite greeting period, anything less is just rude).
