From the editors of
PROPER GREETINGS:
Stop Your Dog from
Barking & Jumping
when the
Doorbell Rings
Training Your Dog Not To Jump Up
Good greetings make
good neighbors
sits, or at least has four feet on the floor, then
turn back to greet the dog.
•
sk your dog to sit and reinforce by petting
A
him if/when he does.
•
ack away from your dog (if you have your
B
dog on leash) and wait for him to sit before
greeting or petting him. If he jumps up while
you are petting him, simply stop the petting
and take a step backward. Resume petting
only if he sits.
•
oss a toy conveniently provided by you to
T
redirect the dog’s behavior before the jump
happens.
•
alk away from your dog through a gate or
W
door and close it behind them to keep the
dog on the other side.
By Pat Miller , CBCC-KA, CPDT-KA, CDBC
There’s a common misconception that dogs jump
on people to establish dominance. Balderdash!
Dogs jump on people because there’s something
about jumping that is reinforcing for the dog
- usually the human attention that results
from the jumping. If you want your dog to stop
jumping on people, you have to be sure he
doesn’t get reinforced for it. Here are five things
to do when your dog jumps on people:
1. Interrupt. Minimize the reinforcement your
dog gets from jumping on someone by cheerfully
removing him from the situation as soon as
possible. To that end, you may want to leave a
“tab” attached to your dog’s collar when he’s
around people - a short (4 to 6 inch) leash that
makes it easy for you to lead him away. Don’t
leave the tab on your dog when he’s alone; he
could get it caught on something.
2. Manage. When you know your dog is likely to
have trouble controlling himself, put his leash on
before he can jump on someone. When you see
the jumping-up gleam in his eye, restrain him
to prevent the reinforcement he gets from the
initial contact. Other useful management tools
to prevent reinforcement include strategically
located tethers, baby gates, doors, exercise pens,
and crates.
3. Educate. Tell friends, family and even
temporary acquaintances what you want them
to do if your dog starts to jump up. Insist they
not reinforce jumping up behavior - even those
friends who claim they don’t mind! Educational
options include telling them to:
•
reet your dog before he jumps, perhaps
G
even kneeling to greet a small dog.
4. Train. Of course you need to practice polite
greetings in the absence of the exciting
stimulus of guests and strangers by reinforcing
your dog’s appropriate greeting with you and
other family members. Be sure to take advantage
of the presence of guests and strangers to
reinforce your dog’s polite greeting behaviors
while you’re managing with leashes and tethers.
5. Apologize/take responsibility. It’s your job
to prevent your dog from jumping on people,
even when they say they don’t mind. If your
management efforts fail and your dog does
jump up, apologize.
If in the process of jumping up he puts
muddy pawprints on a business suit, snags a pair
of nylons, knocks down a small child, or otherwise
does some kind of property damage - even if
the damage is minor - be responsible and make
amends: pay for the cleaning bill, purchase a new
pair of nylons, buy the child an ice cream cone, or
do whatever you need to do to repair the damage.
Then redouble your training and management
efforts.
•Turn and step away from your dog until he
The Whole Dog Journal™ Proper Greetings — 2
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Unwanted
Barking at The
Front Door
Here's how to teach
your dog to behave
calmly when someone
is at the door
By Pat Miller , CBCC-KA, CPDT-KA, CDBC
Unexpected visitors have pulled into your
driveway, exited their car, and are walking up
the steps to your front door. You brace yourself.
You know what’s coming next. “Ding-Dong,” goes
your cheerful doorbell, and your dog charges to
the door, unleashing a frenzy of ferocious
Is your dog a nightmare when people come to the door,
or a dream? Mostly it depends on what you do following
the knock or ringing of the doorbell. Running to the door
yelling, "I'll get it!" will likely inspire your dog to do the
same!
The Whole Dog Journal™ Proper Greetings — 3
barking. Frustrated and angry, you yell at her to
be quiet - to no avail - while you try to grab onto
her collar and open the door to greet your guests.
Her doorbell display is so embarrassing that
you’re becoming more and more reclusive,
meeting friends at restaurants rather than
inviting anyone to your home for social events.
Don’t despair; you’re not alone. In fact, doorbell
arousal behavior is pretty common. And there is
hope.
Why doorbells?
Thousands of dog owners around the country
have canine family members who present similar
distressing doorbell behaviors. These dogs may
be naturally somewhat protective, and quickly
come to associate the ringing doorbell with the
presence of an intruder on their property. Barking
at the bell may send a serious “Go away or I’ll eat
you” message. Even when there’s no aggressive
intent, the excessive vocal display serves to
announce an event they want the rest of the
family to be aware of. “Someone’s here!
Someone’s here!” If a doorbell-aroused dog is
very social, his frenetic barking may also signify
an excited, “Hurry, hurry, hurry and let ‘em in so
I can jump all over them and say hi!”
From early puppyhood, dogs realize that
the ringing of the doorbell itself is an event - it
gets you excited. Really. What happens when the
doorbell rings? One or more humans in the home
jump up and move quickly to the door, usually
with human body language arousal signals,
including fast movement, alert or excited facial
expression, tension in the muscles, and loud
vocalization (“I’ll get it!” or “Be right there!”).
It’s no wonder our dogs learn to get excited
right alongside us as we dash to the door,
“barking” our heads off.
It doesn’t even have to be the doorbell. Some
dogs are equally aroused by a knock at the door,
or the sound of footsteps up the walkway, or even
a car pulling in the driveway. These are all things
they’ve come to associate with the excitement of
the event - someone coming to, and often coming
in, the door.
Manage, modify, train
A good doorbell manners program is a
combination of management, classical
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conditioning, and operant conditioning. Ideally,
you implement the program before your dog
learns inappropriate door behavior. If it’s too
late for that, it’s never too late to start changing
behavior.
If you start by programming appropriate
classical and operant responses to door arrivals
from day one, your dog will quickly learn
incompatible operant behaviors in response
to the environmental cues that someone is
approaching his home. He will also make a
different association with the arrival of guests,
and as a result his emotional response will be
relaxed and positive. If you’re having to undo
previously programmed inappropriate behaviors,
your training and modification program will take
longer, but you can still accomplish your goal of
calm instead of chaos when visitors arrive on your
doorstep. Here are several options for achieving
doorbell calm:
•
Mostly classical: Classical conditioning means
giving your dog an association between two
stimuli. In the case of the doorbell or other
“arrival” stimuli, you’re going to convince the
part of your dog’s brain that controls emotion
(the amygdala) that someone ringing the
doorbell, knocking on the door, or walking up
your front steps makes absolutely wonderful
stuff happen. For our classical conditioning
purposes, “wonderful stuff” likely means
very high-value food, such as canned chicken
(rinsed and drained), or some other moist,
meaty, tasty treat that she doesn’t get in the
normal course of events.
1. Have your dog on leash, preferably some
distance from the door, and a large supply of
very high-value treats.
2. Instruct another family member to ring the
doorbell. Immediately feed your dog a highvalue treat. Or ring the doorbell yourself and
feed a treat, if a helper isn’t available. Look for a
remote battery-powered doorbell at the hardware
store or on the Web - one that sounds like your
existing doorbell. Alternatively, you could record
the doorbell ringing, and play the recording. Or
download a recording of a ringing doorbell from
the Internet and play that. (You can find doorbells,
The Whole Dog Journal™ Proper Greetings — 4
knocking, and just about any other sounds you
can imagine online at findsounds.com/ISAPI/
search.dll.) Practice at least twice a day, five
minutes per session (more is better) until your
dog looks happily to you for a treat when she
hears the doorbell ring.
This is called a “conditioned emotional
response” or CER. Note: If your dog already goes
from zero to 100 the instant she hears the bell,
you can reduce the intensity of stimulus to keep
her below threshold by starting as far away from
the chime box as possible, by reducing the
volume of your chime box if you have that
feature, or by using the recorded doorbell sound
and turning the volume down low enough that
she doesn’t go “over threshold” immediately upon
hearing it. Part of your program will then also
include gradually increasing the volume of the
bell, before you move on to Step 4.
3. When you are getting consistent CERs from
your dog at the sound of the doorbell, repeat the
exercise with your dog off-leash, a short distance
away from you. When she looks at you with her
“Where’s my chicken?” CER and walks the few
steps to you, feed her treats. You are adding
operant pieces to her behavior now: she has
the classical association between doorbell and
chicken, but she’s choosing to come to you. That’s
operant behavior.
4. When she’ll hustle to you from any point in
the same room, build in a sit before you feed the
chicken - more operant behavior. You may need
to cue it at first, but your goal is to create an
automatic sit, so that when the doorbell rings she
runs to you and sits politely every time. You can
encourage your dog to sit with your body
language - stand up straight, and move your hand
toward your chest if necessary - and eventually
fade those cues by minimizing your movements,
until she offers sits automatically.
5. Gradually increase the distance between you
and your dog, until she comes running to you
from any room in the house when she hears the
doorbell, and offers a sit.
6. Now practice Steps 1 through 4 with real
visitors coming to the house. You may have to
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bribe your friends with the promise of food;
schedule a dinner party but ask your guests to
arrive at 5- to 10-minute intervals so you get
several practice sessions in a short time. If your
friendships are strong you can even ask them to
leave and come back a few times during the
evening so you get more chances to practice.
When your dog is solid on the Step 5 behavior,
you can slowly begin to diminish the frequency
of your treat delivery. Make it random; don’t just
suddenly stop treating, but skip one here and
there, and use some other form of reinforcement
that your dog loves, such as happy praise, a
scratch in her itchy spot, or her favorite toy.
Eventually you can phase out treats altogether,
but be ready for remedial practice sessions if her
door manners start to deteriorate.
Utilize the same process for door knocks, for
people coming up the walk to your door, and
for cars pulling in the driveway. Associate the
stimulus with good stuff in order to give your
dog a different behavioral response to the various
sounds of visitors arriving.
•
Mostly operant: Alternatively, you can choose
a training approach that focuses on operant
behavior from the start, by simply teaching
your dog that the doorbell (or knock) is her cue
to do a specific behavior, such as lie down on
a dog bed you’ve strategically placed in your
foyer, or run to her crate in the living room.
For best results, use backchaining for this
exercise, meaning you’ll teach the last piece
of the behavior first, and build backward until
you’ve completed the entire behavior chain. If
you’re going to teach your dog to lie down on
a dog bed in your foyer, it would look like this:
1. Stand a foot from the bed and either lure or
shape your dog to lie on the bed. To lure, say “Go
to bed!” or “Doorbell!” or whatever cue you want
to use, put a tasty treat in front of her nose and
lure her onto the bed, then cue her to lie down.
Click and give her a treat.
To shape the behavior, wait for any micromovement toward the bed: even just a glance or a
lean toward it. Then click and toss a treat behind
your dog so she has to get up to eat it. When she
comes back toward you (and the bed) take
advantage of the “reset” to click while she’s
moving, and toss the treat to reset her again giving her another opportunity to move toward
you (and the bed) and get clicked. When you have
shaped her to go to the bed and lie down on it,
then add your cue.
2. When your dog will lie down on her bed on
cue when you are a foot away, move another
foot away from the bed and repeat the exercise
(this part should go quickly).
3. Gradually move farther and farther away from
the bed, making sure she does the “go to bed”
behavior reliably at each new location before
increasing distance. Practice from all different
directions, until she will go to her bed on cue
from anywhere in the foyer.
In a “mostly operant” approach, you teach your dog to
perform a specific behavior – such as go to his bed – using
the doorbell as the cue. For this, you’ll need a helper to ring
the bell.
The Whole Dog Journal™ Proper Greetings — 5
4. Now add the doorbell as a new “go to bed” cue.
Whenever you add a new cue, you put it in front
of the known cue, so you will ring the doorbell,
then say “Go to bed,” and click and treat when
she complies. You are saying to her, “Dog, this
‘ding-dong’ sound means the same thing as your
‘go to bed’ cue.”
5. With repetitions, you will see her start to
move to her bed when she hears the doorbell,
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even before you give the verbal cue. This means
she’s made the connection between the new
doorbell cue and the old verbal cue. Click and
jackpot with several treats one after the other
when she lies down on her bed. You may need to
remind her with the verbal cue few more times,
but she’s there.
6. Now increase distance until she’ll go to her bed
upon hearing the doorbell cue from anywhere in
the foyer, and then generalize to anywhere in the
house. Now when your dog hears the doorbell
she’ll automatically run to her bed from
anywhere in the house, and lie down.
If you prefer the crate in the living room
scenario, just substitute “crate” for “dog bed” and
follow the same steps. Note that while you were
focusing on operant behavior in this training
approach, your dog was also getting a positive
classical association with the doorbell, because
she was getting treats in close proximity to the
sound of the chimes. Classical and operant
conditioning are always both in play, even when
we’re focusing on one or the other.
•
Management: As you work to create
associations, modify behavior, and train new
operant responses to the doorbell and other
“visitors arriving” cues, you’ll want to include
the always useful management piece of your
behavior program.
When your dog has successfully arrived on
her bed - either in response to your “in-progress” verbal cue, or to the doorbell itself - you
can tether her there to prevent an after-thefact aroused rush to greet your guests.
To reinforce polite greeting as well as
appropriate doorbell manners, offer your
visitors treats and ask them to walk over to
your dog and feed her treats as long as she
is sitting or lying down. Tell them that if she
stands up, jumps up, or barks, they should
step back, wait for her to sit again, then
feed her the treat and give her a scratch
under the chin.
Note: If your dog barks aggressively at
guests as they approach her on her tether,
you’ll need a separate behavior modification
The Whole Dog Journal™ Proper Greetings — 6
program for the aggression. Please consult
with a qualified positive behavior
professional for assistance with this behavior
challenge. Meanwhile, teaching your dog to
run to her crate may be a better option for
her than running to her bed in the foyer.
If you’ve chosen the crate instead of the
dog bed, management is as simple as
closing the crate door. When your guests have
been greeted and made comfortable, barring
aggressive behavior you can let your dog out,
on-leash if necessary, for introductions.
Depending on the degree of your dog’s
doorbell arousal, baby gates and closed doors,
or even a leash, can also effectively dampen
or divert intense guest-arrival behavior.
Other options
There are many other creative options for
programming or modifying doorbell behavior.
Here are three.
• Try changing your doorbell sound. If your dog
has a very strong emotional response to the
existing doorbell, it will be easier to give him
a new association with a new sound. Don’t
actually use it as your new doorbell until
you’ve conditioned a very positive response
for your dog (or trained him to perform an
appropriate operant behavior in response
to the new chime). When your training is
completed, then substitute the new doorbell
in place of the current one.
• Get a toy: You can teach your dog that the
doorbell is her cue to run to fetch a toy. You can
toss the toy for her to fetch (have her offer a sit
first!), and thus focus her energies on the toy
instead of the doorbell or your guests. You can
also teach her to take the toy to your visitors,
and construct a polite greeting behavior that
includes sitting until they toss the toy for her.
• Manners Minder: This unique remote treatdelivery gadget was developed by veterinary
behaviorist Sophia Yin for a variety of training
and behavior applications, including door
manners! The concept is simple. When you
push a button, the unit beeps and delivers a
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treat. Your dog makes the classical association
between the “beep” and treat, and quickly
learns (operantly) to run to the machine when
she hears the beep. The beep becomes the cue
to run to the machine.
Then add the doorbell as the new cue to run
to the machine, as in Step 4 of the “mostly
operant” approach, above. Ring the doorbell,
beep the beep, and the machine delivers.
When the doorbell alone sends your dog to
the machine, fade the beep cue by utilizing
the “mute” feature of the remote: you press
the button to deliver a treat but no beep
occurs; the doorbell alone sends your dog to
the machine for her treat. Gradually increase
your dog’s distance from the machine so the
doorbell sends her running to her Manners
Minder from anywhere in the house.
It takes work, but it works!
So there you have it: lots of ways to install
appropriate doorbell manners in your dog. They
work. One of my early clients had an Australian
Shepherd with inappropriate doorbell behavior;
she would run to the door barking fiercely when
the doorbell rang. In a matter of just three weeks,
Sasha learned to run to her bed and lie down
calmly at the sound of the doorbell. Her owner
was amazed and delighted. So was I.
The Manners Minder is a useful tool for teaching your dog to
go to a designated spot on cue. Operated by a remote control,
it allows you to dispense a treat (from a dog-proof reservoir)
to your dog at a distance from you.
The Whole Dog Journal™ Proper Greetings — 7
Reinforcing a
Proper Greeting
A level approach
By Pat Miller , CBCC-KA, CPDT-KA, CDBC
Recently, the Peaceable Paws Training Center
switched its group class format to “Levels.” Instead
of a progressive curriculum with new exercises
introduced each week, dogs and humans learn
and practice a small, fixed set of behaviors until
they’re ready to progress to the next level, where
they begin working on new skills. One of the Level
1 skills is “polite greeting.” Because it can be a
challenging behavior to teach, it’s often the one
that keeps a student in Level 1 the longest. Because
it’s an important good manners social behavior, it’s
also a Level 2 and Level 3 skill.
The polite-greeting skill difficulty increases
with each level. For Level 1, the dog must sit for
greetings and not jump up in at least 8 out of 10
times as someone approaches. For Level 2, the dog
sits for greetings, and the greeter pets the dog
on his head or scratches under his chin without
the dog jumping up at least 8 out of 10 times. In
order to complete Level 3, the dog must be able
to walk up to another dog and human, with dogs
walking on the outside, further away from each
other, human on the inside, closer together, as they
approach. Both dogs stop and sit while handlers
stop, greet each other, shake hands, and walk on.
(This is one of the 10 tests a dog must pass in order
to achieve a Canine Good Citizen certificate from
the American Kennel Club.)
So how does one go about teaching this
desirable good manners behavior? It should come
as no surprise to regular readers that the answer
involves reinforcing the behavior you want, and
making sure the behavior you don’t want doesn’t
get reinforced.
On-leash, with strangers
Start with your dog on leash next to you. Have
your helper approach and stop just out of leashrange, holding a tasty treat high against her
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chest. Hold the leash and stand still, waiting.
Your dog will eventually get frustrated that he
can’t jump on the helper, and he’ll sit to figure it
out. The instant he sits, have your helper click her
clicker (or use a verbal marker such as the word
“Yes!”) and pop the treat in your dog’s mouth. This
is called reinforcing an incompatible behavior. Your
dog can’t sit and jump up at the same time. If he
consistently gets reinforced for sitting and doesn’t
get reinforced for jumping up, he’ll choose to offer
the behavior that gets rewarded.
When your dog is sitting, relax the tension a
tiny bit so he’s holding the sit himself, not being
restrained by the leash. Only give him a little bit of
slack, so you can prevent him from contacting the
approaching person if he decides to revert to the
jumping-up behavior that (probably) has a long
history of reinforcement.
Keep repeating this exercise. It can take as few
as a half-dozen repetitions for your dog to start
sitting as the helper approaches. At that point,
if he tries to leap up to get the treat when it is
offered, have your helper whisk it out of reach and
say “Oops!” in a cheerful voice, and wait, just out
of jumping range. When your dog sits again, your
helper clicks (or says “Yes!”) and offers the treat
again. Your dog will soon learn to sit tight in order
to get the treat instead of jumping for it, because
jumping makes the treat go away.
In a variation of this exercise, you can click and
pop the treat in his mouth when he sits. If you do it
this way he’ll start looking at you and sitting when
a person approaches, instead of looking at the
person approaching.
Repeat this exercise with as many different
humans as possible: big ones, little ones, kids,
seniors, dads carrying babies, moms carrying
briefcases, and so on. When you’re out walking
and a stranger admires your dog and asks if she
can pet him, hand her a treat and have her do
the exercise. You’ll be amazed by how quickly
your dog starts sitting as he sees people
approach him.
NOTE: In these exercises, it’s important that
you wait for your dog to sit of his own volition;
do not ask him to sit. You want him to choose to
sit without being asked, and the way to achieve
that is to simply ignore the behavior you don’t
want and reward the behavior you do want. If you
ask him to sit, he may learn that he should sit for
The Whole Dog Journal™ Proper Greetings — 8
Large dogs and small can be a frightening site to strangers.
Teaching proper behavior in public is a must.
people when you (or they) ask him to, but he’s
allowed to jump up if you don’t ask.
On-leash, alone
Okay, so you don’t always have a friendly helper
handy. You can still practice this exercise on your
own, by attaching your dog’s leash to a solid
object. Better yet, use a tether: a plastic-coated
cable with snaps at both ends. One end can be
secured around a heavy piece of furniture, or
attached to a strategically placed eye-bolt. Or you
can attach the tether to an eye-bolt screwed into
a block of wood, slip the cable under a door, and
close the door; the door holds the tether in place.
Walk about 30 feet away, then turn around and
start walking back to your dog. As long as he is
sitting, keep approaching. The instant he jumps
up, stop. When he sits, move forward again. In
this exercise, the reward for sitting is simply that
you come closer. You can give your dog a food
treat when you reach him and he’s still sitting,
but you don’t have to toss him one every time
he sits.
If you want to experiment with variations
on this exercise, try turning your back on him or
actually backing up a step when he gets up, and
see if that convinces him to sit even faster. The
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idea here is that not only does the reward (you)
stop when the dog gets up, the reward (you, your
attention, and treats) actually goes farther away!
Off-leash practice
You come home from work, walk in the front
door, and see your 80-pound dog flying over the
back of the sofa. You know a brutal greeting is
coming. There’s no leash to restrain him. What
should you do?
Turn your back on him! Watch him out of the
corner of your eye, and continue to turn away
and step away as he tries to jump on you.
Again, in a surprisingly short period of time
your dog will sit in frustration to figure out why
he’s not getting his ration of attention. The instant
he sits, say “Yes!” in a happy voice, feed him a treat,
and pet him if he enjoys being petted (not all dogs
do!). Yes, you have to have a treat with you when
you walk in the door. I suggest keeping a jar of
tasty biscuits on the front stoop. Or keep cookies
in your pockets all the time, like I do. If he starts
to jump up again after he eats the treat, turn and
step away. Keep repeating this until he realizes
that “Sit!” gets the attention, not “Jump!”
You want to be sure to give the click or “Yes!”
marker when he is sitting. Click (Yes!) means,
“Whatever behavior you are doing at the instant
you hear this word has earned you a treat reward.”
Because all living things repeat behaviors that are
rewarding to them, using the click and reward for
the sit will increase the likelihood that he sits when
he greets people. If he’s consistently rewarded for
sitting, and never rewarded for jumping up, he’ll
quickly learn that jumping up is not a behavior
worth offering.
When you do this exercise, be sure you don’t
teach your dog a “behavior chain” – a series of
behaviors that get connected or “chained” together
because the dog thinks the reward is dependent
on the performance of all the behaviors, not just
the last one.
Sometimes we use behavior chains to our
benefit. A dog can learn to run an entire obstacle
course for a reward at the very end without any
direction from the owner because the obstacles
have been chained in a particular order. In the
case of jumping up, if you’re not careful, your dog
might learn the short behavior chain of “jump up,
sit, reward.”
The Whole Dog Journal™ Proper Greetings — 9
The way to avoid this is to look for, and
frequently reward, the times when your dog sits
without jumping up first. We have a tendency
to ignore our dogs when they are being good,
and pay attention to them when they are doing
inappropriate behaviors. If you remember to look
for opportunities to reward the good behavior of
sitting, your dog won’t think he has to jump up to
get your attention in order to get a reward
for sitting.
Incompatible behavior
This works if your dog responds really well to
the verbal cue for sit or down. When your dog
approaches you, ask for a sit or a down before
he has a chance to jump up, and reward that
behavior with a click and a treat. With enough
repetitions, he’ll learn that the sit or down
gets rewarded, and he may start to offer them
voluntarily. Be careful; as noted above, he may
learn to sit if you ask, but jump up if you don’t.
Caution: This approach works only if your dog
is very responsive to the cue to sit or lie down and
does it the instant you ask. If you have to repeat
the cue several times with your dog jumping up
on you all the while, you are paying attention to
him (rewarding him) for jumping on you, thereby
rewarding that behavior and teaching him to
ignore your verbal cues for sit or down at the
same time. Oops!
Putting the jump on cue
I recommend this only when someone in the
family finds a dog’s antics endearing and wants
to be able to invite him to jump up. In this
case, you teach your dog to jump up on a
particular cue such as the word “Hugs!” (not
patting your chest, as too many well-meaning
strangers and children will likely invite the
behavior), and teach him that the only time he
can jump up is when someone gives the cue.
This means that he gets rewarded only when
he has been invited to jump up, and never gets
rewarded for jumping up without an invitation.
My now-long-gone terrier-mix, Josie, was allowed
to jump up if I got on my knees, patted my
shoulders and said “Hugs!” Not many wellmeaning strangers and children will do that!
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jumping. If you put your mind to it, it may be
easier than you think!
Pat Miller, CBCC-KA, CPDT-KA, CDBC, is WDJ's
Training Editor. Author of numerous books
on positive dog training, she lives in Fairplay,
Maryland, site of her Peaceable Paws training
center, where she offers dog training classes
and courses for trainers.
Teaching a dog to jump on cue is a behavior that may make
sense in some households.
Time out on a tether
Put a comfortable rug or bed at each tether
location. When your dog is out of control and
jumping on the company (or you!), he gets a
cheerful, “Oops, time out!” and a few minutes on
his tether. If you know in advance that he’s going
to maul Aunt Maude the instant she walks in
the door, clip him to the tether before you open
the door, and release him once he settles down.
(Have Aunt Maude practice some polite greeting
approaches while your dog is tethered, if she’s
able and willing.) If you release your dog and he
revs up again, just do another “Oops, time out!”
Remember, despite your frustration over his
behavior, this is a cheerful interlude, not a
forceful punishment. He’ll learn to control his
own behavior in order to avoid time-outs, and
you won’t need to yell at him.
Jumping up is a normal, natural dog behavior.
Like so many other normal dog behaviors that are
unacceptable in human society, it is up to you to
communicate to your dog that jumping up isn’t
rewarded. Help him become a more welcome
member of your human pack by rewarding an
acceptable behavior that can take the place of
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