How can I train dogs not to jump up on people?
This is something any good dog training class will go over. Here’s the basic techniques I remember from when we did it with our dogs (who are jumpers) Enlist a friend to come to your door. The process starts before the door even opens. Get your dog to sit. Put your hand on the knob and start to open the door. If he gets up, close the door (starting over) and get him to sit again. Repeat until you can get the door open without him getting up. When the person actually comes in, you need them to help you. If the dog starts to jump on them, the person needs to turn away from the dog and ignore it. As the owner, you try to get the dog back into a sit. If they won’t, the door closes, rinse and repeat. Every success, they get a treat, little pieces of dried liver are good. In the beginning you’ll be rewarding any little success, like sitting for 2 seconds, then 5 etc. Then it’ll be getting the door open with no problem, treat, and so forth. Be lavish with the treats at any successes.
As has been pointed out, you need to enlist the help of your friends to do this. It was astonishingly easy to train our dog to not jump on us (we used the turn-away-and-ignore technique), but he still jumps a little on everybody else. He’s small enough that he never overwhelms anyone, which is why we haven’t yet put in the not-insignificant effort to get him to jump on nobody, but having read plenty, I know how it will have to go. We will have to explain things very carefully to our friends before they get into the house exactly what they have to do (turn away and ignore him when he runs up to them and jumps). We have to be very insistent about it because almost everybody says “it’s okay, I don’t mind”. I used to say this too, not realizing that every time I petted, talked to, or otherwise gave attention to a dog that jumps on me, I was training it to jump on me. The other problem we have is that he runs to the door.
Looks like folks have given the whole range of advice so far, I can only tell you what my trainer suggested and which worked well for me: Dogs learn by repetition – because we can only communicate with noises, some hand signals, and distributing treats, these are your tools and they must be used again and again, often together. If you’re like me you respond to you dog jumping on you (when you get home probably) by making some noises, putting your hands on him to brush him off, and telling him what a putz he was for jumping on you as soon as he gets down. If that’s so, then you’re also finding that this technique doesn’t work. My trainer suggested that the above method was actually discouraging my dog when he finally did follow my command: I would use a mean tone to tell him he made a mistake when I should have been encouraging him immediately upon him following my “off” command.
The turn-away-and-ignore thing works with our dog, both when is is jumping up (and crotch sniffing) and when he is bothering people sitting down. Unfortunately sometimes our friends are not very good at it. Ex– last night we had friends over and the dog was bothering one of them and he kept patting the dog on the head and saying good dog every time! So not only do you need to train the dog, you need to train your friends.
Teach the dogs not to jump on anyone at anytime first, then worry about the ritual at the door. I have 5 dogs, 3 of them Labradors and they are just too big to be allowed to jump up on anyone. Try not to create to much excitement going in or out of the door for example coming home and greeting them right at the door or when it’s time for walking making the opening of the door the portal to fun time.
