How to Stop Dog Jumping On You in 3 EASY Steps

It can be really frustrating, embarrassing and dangerous if you have a dog that is always

jumping

. As a professional dog trainer, I can tell you that most of my clients jump on me the first time we meet. Despite having assured their guardian that it is a fairly common problem, people usually feel very embarrassed and nervous. I want to show you a quick way to teach dogs to greet more politely! I'm going to demonstrate the process with Louie, who is one of the most extreme jumpers I've ever met. I'm going to show you how, without any correction, I took Louie from this... to this.

I'm excited to show you my personal, proven method for solving jumps. . Before we get into training, I want to talk about how not to approach

jumping

. Our dogs jump because they are excited to see people and want attention. It's probably a behavior that was accidentally rewarded when he was a cute little puppy. It becomes less cute as the dog gets older and suddenly we consider it a problematic behavior as the dog gets older. Now, when our dog jumps, we are likely to push him to the ground with our hands or tell him to get down. The problem with both is that the dog still gets attention for jumping, so it worked.

If the behavior works, the dog will repeat it. On the other hand, you've probably heard of or even used aversive training methods to correct jumping, such as on-leash corrections, shock collars, or kneeing your dog in the chest.  I strongly recommend NOT doing them. Once again, our dogs jump because they are excited to see people and want to say hello. It's not that they are behaving badly, it's that they haven't been taught a different way to greet people or ask for attention. Dogs learn very quickly by creating associations, so they have an idea about something based on previous experience.

If we use these harsh corrections to

stop

the jump, the dog will associate that frightening or painful experience with the person. This could lead to things like reactivity or even aggression. I don't know about you, but I'd rather have a friendly dog ​​that sometimes jumps than one that is aggressive because now he's afraid of people. Fortunately, however, those are not your two options. Instead, we can reinforce an alternative behavior so that our dog does not jump. I want you to change your mindset from “how can I get my dog ​​to

stop

jumping?” to “what could I teach my dog ​​to do instead of jump?” For this training you will need two things: first, you will need a loaded marker word so that you can tell your dog the precise moment in which he has performed the correct behavior.

As you'll see during this video, I use the word yes. If you don't know what a marker word is or how to condition it, I'll link a video in the title. And second, you'll need plenty of small dog treats.  In the first step, we are going to cue sit and make it a highly reinforced behavior. I really encourage you to practice sitting as a new default behavior when greeting someone. Some trainers will recommend rewarding your dog as long as he has all four paws on the ground, but I think this only works for very gentle jumpers.

If your dog is more stern, I highly recommend training him to sit during all greetings. I think this is more effective because we give the dog a task and he can act as a circuit breaker when he is really excited.   If you haven't taught your dog to sit reliably following a verbal cue, I'll link a tutorial on how I teach this quickly in the title. To start working on jumping, keep a treat jar outside your house so you can have a handful of treats in your hand when he comes home.   When you first come in and your dog is exuberant, immediately ask him to sit when he approaches.  Here I'm indicating that he sits behind a baby gate because that's how Louie's guardian had guests greet him and he wanted our training to match his actual situation.

If, on the other hand, you have a dog who greets you right at the door, your training will look more like what I'll show you below when he walks through the door. The second step is to complete repetitions of anything that might trigger jumping so we can try out this new behavior. I encourage you to make a list of all the times you notice your dog jumping. The really common times when a dog jumps are: when he first enters the house, when he has been petting him and stops doing so, when he moves to a new area of ​​the house or when he tries to put the leash on him. . .

I want you to practice many repetitions of these scenarios in which your dog is likely to jump.  Ask them to sit and reward them for doing so. Repetition one… And repetition two. Hi Lou, sit down. Yes. Repetitions help the dog be calm enough so that he can learn what we ask him to do. When you start working on this, you should anticipate that your dog is going to jump on you.   If something has worked for them in the past, there is no reason why they should not try it again. When your dog jumps on you, I want you to turn your back on him or even walk away a little, ignoring him completely.

Please don't say anything, not even tell them “no” or tell them to leave. I know this is very difficult, but we want to make sure that no attention is paid when jumping. We are transferring all reward history to provide a seat for jumping to become an extinct behavior. The third step is to repeat this process while gradually removing the "sit" signal. We want sitting to become an automatic behavior that our dog performs without being asked. This is particularly important if you have a dog that jumps on guests. Again, practice many repetitions of all the scenarios on your list that previously encouraged your dog to jump, but this time wait for him to volunteer to sit alone.

Be sure to reward them when they do. It's okay to gradually phase out rewards over time and instead offer affection or praise, but I recommend that you make sure to continue rewarding in some way.  Dogs repeat what works, so it is important to continue reinforcing the new default behavior of sitting when greeting someone. "Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I dropped one. Don't you mind? Yeah. Yeah. Can I pet you? Hi buddy. Yeah, we're going out soon. Yeah. Okay." Let me know in the comments if this video was helpful or if you have any questions. I'll be posting another bonus jumping video in the next few days!

I recently did a poll on my Instagram asking people if they wanted a step-by-step video for solving jumps like the one you just saw, or a longer one showing these

steps

in action during real training sessions. The actual training sessions won the vote, but since so many people took the time to vote and THERE WERE a large number of people requesting the step-by-step tutorial, I decided to do both videos. In the next few days I will upload the highly requested video where I show you these real training sessions with Louie where I implement these

steps

. I'm also going to talk about how you handle this if you have TWO dogs that jump.

Happy training, see you soon!