Does your dog look like this whenever you get home after a few hours of leaving your dog home alone? If yes, your dog needs to calm the F down! But, before we chat about how to stop a dog jumping on people and being his overexcited self all the time, let’s hear what Jack has to say to his hooms…
Dear Hooman,
Omg.. OMG… OMG… OmG.. It’s You, my best friend!! Never been so excited for anyone before… Gotta jump on you to show you that… You know it’s been our thing since I was a kid… You come, I jump. You get food, I jump. You get toys, I jump. You no give me attention, I jump. Jumping gets me good things faster… Jumping is fun. Jumping is… OMG… Is that Susan on the door.. Susan… my best friend!! Never been so excited for anyone before… Susan, here I come…
With lots and lots and lots of love,
Dog, the jumping jack
Sorry..
Jump, the jacking dog
Sorry..
Jack, the jumping jog
Sorry (boing)… too (boing)… excited (Boing)…
We know so many dogs who feel the exact same way, right? But what exactly is going on in these dogs’ minds? Why do they enjoy being the jumping jack that they are? Well, there could be several reasons why your dog is jumping up on people –
He’s excited to see people
Sometimes, our dogs are a mirror reflection of us. The energy that we give out is exactly what they consume and portray. You might have noticed this with your own dogs. When you’re super happy, your dog is jumpy. When you’re tensed or stressed, your dog is quiet and usually to his own self. After a long day’s work, we don’t hide our excitement to see our dogs, they don’t feel the need to hide it too. Jumping up is simply an extension of all the happiness and excitement in a wagging tail
You’ve allowed it on yourself
The 1st thing we say or even think about a kid who is badly behaved is the kind of upbringing he’s getting at home. Similarly, with dogs, what you raise is what you get. As a dog trainer, when a dog looks at me and jumps up on me out of excitement (however cute it might seem), it doesn’t take long for me to figure the dog parents’ leniency with him.
A dog will feel free to do everything to other people that his owners let him get away with at home. Behaviors like begging, jumping up, attention-seeking barking, etc are a few examples.
A dog will feel free to do everything to other people that his owners let him get away with at home.
That’s the only way he has learned to say Hi
As humans, sometimes, we have wrong notions about happiness in dogs. A dog jumping up on people to say Hi doesn’t mean he loves his humans a lot more than a dog that doesn’t jump. It just means the jumpier dog has learned a very unnecessarily boisterous way to communicate with humans. Unfortunately, a lot of dogs get the attention they desire only and only when they throw themselves at humans and get completely ignored when they’re being quiet.
we have wrong notions about happiness in dogs. A dog jumping up on people to say Hi doesn’t mean he loves his humans a lot more than a dog that doesn’t jump.
He gets rewarded for it
If you find yourself hugging your dog as soon as he jumps up on you to say Hi after you return home, you’ve rewarded him for the jump. At walks, if a person wanting to say Hello to your dog approaches and your dog responds by happily approaching him and jumping up on him, he got rewarded for jumping.
Out of habit
When a dog has been following a certain way of communicating with humans since puppyhood, it will be a challenge to kick that behavior out of him in a matter of days. Expecting a 4-year-old Lab to stop jumping on people in a matter of a couple of training sessions is just unreal.
Lack of physical and mental exercise
Every dog needs an outlet for physical and mental exertion. When we fail to provide our dogs with ample exercise through walks and toys, we deprive them of an outlet to release their pent up energies. Under such circumstances, our dogs feel the need to vent out in whatever way they possibly can through routine behaviors like jumping, barking, chewing, etc. Repetition of this on a daily basis makes way for behavioral issues like excessive jumping, barking, destructive chewing, etc
How to get a dog to stop jumping up on people?
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Teach an alternative behavior
A dog learning to control his excitement on seeing you doesn’t mean he’s learning to love you less. It just means he is changing his response to gain a reward. You’re still very much the reward! When we say ‘No’ to a dog for doing something, it’s equally important to teach an alternative behavior. When we say No to a dog for jumping on a person, we have to teach the dog to do something instead of jumping in order to receive the reward. Maybe a Sit, or Down or Stay. As soon as the dog does the command, reward him by letting the person approach and pet him. If he gets up to jump again, create immediate distance. If handling the dog becomes a challenge when guests come over, crate the dog to calm him down first. The faster he calms down, the quicker he’ll get to meet his ‘friends.’
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Do not allow the behavior on ANYONE
“I don’t mind my dog jumping on me, but I don’t want him to jump up on my kids.” Nope. Dogs do not understand inconsistency. It’s either jumping or no jumping. If the dog can get away with something with you, he will try and get away with it with everyone else as well. This will just set the dog up for failure and the training will take forever to finish.
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Make sure the behavior is not rewarded in any way
As discussed above, dogs will continue doing a certain behavior only when they see merit in it. It’s as easy to demotivate them as it is to motivate them. Jumping should not be rewarded with human attention at ANY cost. However, make sure to reward heavily when the dog makes an attempt to be calm and good.
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Nip it in the bud
I can’t stress this enough, but, what you raise is what you get. Any habit or behavior developed during puppyhood WILL stay with him for life. They don’t just magically grow out of a particular phase unless they’re trained.
A golden retriever puppy jumping to greet you is one of the most adorable things in the world. But, a fully grown Golden Retriever doing the same will probably trip you over. Trust me, that’s not cute.
One of my constant advice to new puppy owners is that whatever behaviors your puppy is exhibiting right now, imagine a full-sized dog doing so. If it doesn’t look good in your head, nip it right away.
whatever behaviours your puppy is exhibiting right now, imagine a full sized dog doing so. If it doesn’t look good in your head, nip it right away.
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To train a dog not to jump, train him to jump
When it comes to dogs, their energies aren’t meant to be suppressed. They’re meant to be redirected. If your dog is an avid jumper, teach him to jump on command. Train him to jump through hurdles, skip ropes, jump through hoops, etc. When you close yourself as an outlet for his jumping, you need to open up other outlets.
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Involve other people
Involving friends and family in training would only mean greater consistency, more repetition and faster results. Get friends to come over and teach your dog to politely greet them. You can also involve other people like mailmen (if they’re okay with it) on a day to day basis to teach your dog to greet them politely.
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It’s not okay even for smaller dogs to jump up
“My dog is so small. He’s never gonna hurt anyone when he jumps.” It’s natural to feel this way when you have a small little dog with bite-sized paws. However, what’s important to remember here is that dogs face difficulties in controlling their excitement.
The transition from excitement to hyperactivity to anxiety in them can happen in a matter of seconds. We can easily curb this in bigger dogs as their hyperactivity directly results in us getting hurt. So, we’re a lot more careful with them. But with smaller dogs, we let the excitement go on because it looks cute.
Every time we don’t curb a small dog’s over-excitement, we let him transition into anxiety. It’s not visible to the human eye at first, but, it will be apparent when he starts whining and barking and you won’t know where it’s coming from.
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Use a collar and a leash
Grabbing a dog by his neck or his collar every time he jumps can be a very aversive way to try and control a dog’s hyperactivity. Instead, use a collar and a leash for better control. You can also consider attaching a short leash around your dog’s collar so that it doesn’t come in his way while walking around. Using a leash can help in curbing the behavior as soon as it takes place and making sure the dog doesn’t keep repeating it.
Controlling the jumping behavior in dogs is important as a lot of behavioral problems can stem from it. Issues like hyperactivity, uncontrolled excitement around other people and dogs, excitement barking are all possible behaviors that can crop out of it. You can read further about this behavior in this article by K9ofmine.com