13Nov
The force free way to get your dog to stop jumping, and get then greeting everyone with a polite sit!
Jumping
For jumping, we want to totally ignore it, as well as prevent it from happening! To do this we may need to keep Fido away from exciting situations that are too much! Such as people coming over, keep Fido in a separate area until they have calmed down and all people are in the house. Then let everyone know to ignore the jumping and turn their backs if he decides to, and then let him come out if he won't leave people alone when they ignore him. Time him out in the separate area for thirty seconds then allow for another try. Try to ask for a sit before the jump happens. Watch for the bum popping up, and turn away and ignore. If he breaks the sit and jumps, once all four are on the floor again ask for that sit, and give attention for that sit but never for the jumping, always ignore the jumping! For preventing it on walks, a good way is to step on the leash. If you feel comfortable enough that you can anchor your dog and not have them pull you down, and then they cant jump up because they are anchored. If they are too strong and may pull you down, opt to not step on the leash and just get Fido into a sit. If people want to come to say hi, Fido has to stay sitting until they approach, if he or she won't stay sitting, then opt to not have the person come to say hi just let them know you are working on manners!
Polite Greetings
To practice polite greetings we want to have our dogs started in a sit on a leash, then reward that sit. Then we want to have someone approach the dog if Fido pops up, the person walks away. Then you re-cue the sit, and then once Fido is back sitting you can have the person re-approach. If Fido stays sitting, a person can come and say hello to Fido, if Fido pops up the person goes away. Like all of our cues we want to start this practice in a very low distraction environment, and opt to not allow greetings if we know Fido wont be able to handle sitting. Start with people approaching calmly, and then more excited as they go! This exercise is not suitable for nervous or fearful dogs unless practiced with people they are comfortable with!
Any attention is rewarding for our dogs, even negative attention, so asking them to get down, pushing them off, things like that don’t generally work to help jumping, because all of those things give Fido attention when they jump, this is why we choose to ignore and prevent jumping from happening
Remember if you don’t feel confident that stepping on the leash will not pull you down, don’t step on the leash, I don’t recommend this with larger breed dogs, or strong smaller and med breeds. But it works great with my Shih tzu and whippet type dogs.
If sitting is too hard for polite greetings opt to have the criteria lowered to just having all four feet on the ground to gain attention.
A hug cue can be taught to Fido so that if we want them up on us we can ask, but if we don’t want them to jump they wont offer the behaviour! They cant differentiate when jumping is okay and isn’t okay with out having that cue, so we need to show Fido it is only rewarded when we ask for it, never when we haven’t asked.
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