Aspen will be one year in a month which means he is a growing boy. He is around 70lbs now (I think) and he is really, really strong. I'm not that big and neither is my mom, sister, or my boyfriend's mom, so him jumping on us and anyone else HURTS! Aspen jumps like crazy. He loves to get up close and personal to see how your day has gone. I put him on his lead inside when people come and I tell them not to reward him with a hello until he is four on the floor. I also scatter kibble for him sometimes when he is really excited, is that bad? I just worry because he is so big and strong and I feel like I am not making progress. It is the one thing he does that really makes me feel like a mom who hasn't done well in training.
Scattering food when your pup is over-aroused isn't rewarding his behaviour, it's helping to calm him down, so it's a very appropriate thing to do. If you think of the jumping up as something he does in order to expel his excitement, you can see how this works. It's just redirecting to a more appropriate behaviour. What I would do is work on lowering his arousal in these situations. You can do this by practice - as always, I'm here to say "be proactive, not reactive" I did this with one of the very bouncy shelter dogs (and with Shadow when he was a bubba) to good effect. So, to start, in your living room or other calm space, walk a couple of paces from Aspen, call him to you and reward him as soon as he gets to you, keeping those feet down. Gradually increase the difficulty by increasing the distance and your excitement levels. If he's struggling, make it easy again. Always reward calmly and scatter the food on the floor. Once you've got to the stage where you can run around like a hooligan, do jumping jacks or whatever and he still doesn't jump up, you can introduce other people. Make it someone very familiar like another member of your household to start off with. Start by throwing a treat towards them so he approaches them, gets the treat and then immediately call him back to you for another treat. After repeating this several times, he should start to automatically look back to you after getting the treat by the stooge. This is what you're after, so you don't have to call him back - but still mark and reward the turn to you. So he's getting two treats each repetition: one thrown towards the person, then one back by you. If he jumps up at the other person, start this on a lead or a line and don't throw the treat as close. Build it up incrementally until you can throw it right by the stooge's feet and he immediately reorients to you. Then, the stooge can start to become more exciting. Maybe they quietly say "hi" to start with. You keep playing the same game as before, treat towards them, treat by you. The person shouldn't be trying to touch him at this stage, just talking. Monitor Aspen's excitement levels and ensure he is staying calm so that he is set up for success. Over time, the stooge can start becoming more animated, talking in a more excited voice, maybe patting their body, dancing around etc. As before, if he gets over-aroused at any level, take it back to something he can cope with and build it up in smaller steps. Then you can practice this with visitors. You may need to get him into a calm state before starting the game, so put him in a crate or behind a baby gate with a kong when they arrive to help him calm down, then play the game when he's relaxed. I hope that makes sense.
Oh, and another thing I like to train is "paws up on me". My cue for this is "get up". This is great for helping Willow's confidence, and I hope to use it in vet examinations in the future. Because I only reward the "get up" when it's cued, it means it's less likely to happen uncued*. I have strict criteria for this behaviour: I want both front feet to be solidly against me and I want the back feet to remain still. This can take some practice because it needs a lot of core strength on their part. Because I'm rewarding stillness, it's actually a calming behaviour. Once you have duration, you can introduce handling; I can rub my hands all over their sides while they stay in position, and also reach for a treat that might be on a counter top without them breaking. The next step is to have another person start the handling, rubbing their sides, feeling their joints etc, just like a vet would. So I would ideally combine both the training I talked about above and the "get up" cue. * The proviso being: assuming the jumping is a learned behaviour, rather than a way of coping with over-arousal
My pup is only 5.5 months old, so I am not in your situation. However, the snow is finally receding where I live, and as a consequence, I have been able to finally get him out for walks. We are now walking for 35 minutes a day, which is good for both him and me. But what I have noticed over the past two weeks of walking is that he has calmed down a lot. He now sits quietly by my husband, and I. He has been able to control himself in front of new friends when I have asked him to sit, even without a treat. I don't have to tether him to me or to the wall. He spontaneously gets his own toys out of his toy basket and plays with them. Labs need a lot of exercise, and maybe yours is getting what he needs, or maybe he is not. If he is not, then you will see lots more jumping and what you would consider inappropriate behaviors. Dogs a year old need t least about 45 minutes to an hour a day. I can only speak for my dog and I am not generalizing to everyone's dog.
What a great idea! Although I am not sure how many times I could cope on my bum training this with Bramble...last time she jumped up me I fell over backwards!
Haha, yes I can sympathise, Squidge has had me over, too! But they do learn to be a bit more delicate about it when they're standing up "on purpose" rather that just leaping at you through being an eejit - and you can make sure you're stood in a nice braced position, too
