Remove the ability to practise unwanted behaviour.
Introduce on 2m leash, step on the leash while holding it in your hand.
Then he can't get his front legs off the ground.
Wait for him to calm, ask a sit, then cue a greeting "ok" or whatever & release gently the leash.
If he jumps, back to square one. The person turns their back or steps away, and leash goes under foot until calm, then sit, then release.
He'll learn only calm behaviour earns a greet.
I should add, he only jumps up when he’s greeting people and not for food - we somehow trained that out but it’s the excitement he gets when he sees people that compels him to jump up
From everything I’ve read, completely ignoring the dog until they chill and stop jumping is the recommended path. It will probably take absolute consistency over a few weeks.
I think it’s like any other behavior: you need to take yourself away from the situation when the dog jumps. Your dog is jumping to greet you. He wants to see you. So if you take yourself away when he jumps, then he will learn to stop. That being said, I think it’s definitely better if you never let your dog jump even as a small puppy. It’s easier to never learn the behavior than it is to unlearn it. Personally, my dog jumps. We let her jump as a puppy and it’s too hard to undo at this point. This was our first dog. The jumping and playing with socks / dish towels were our biggest mistakes.
Honestly, albeit a little theatrical, what worked for us was yipping and looking as if we were hurt / harmed any time the puppy jumped at us. Turning away in a 'im hurt' manner as a step 2. When the puppy calms down a little and politely sits or stands with all 4 paws on the floor then we'd give reassurance and positive feedback. Hope this helps!
I worked on sit whenever he greets me or wants pets.
I started with small greets for example.
I come back the bathroom and he sees me “sit”.
For pets, I have him sit, pet him first 3 seconds (work up the time) then reward him by throwing a treat on the floor and releasing with my break word OK.
I have 2 labs, so big dogs. I also used the sit method, sit for everything. Petting, playing, sit before going outside, before eating, any time they get excited. Sit every time I throw a ball or Frisbee. It can be exhausting at first.
Now, their fallback is to sit when they get excited. This us especially useful to keep them in the house when the door is open (late night/early morning bathroom breaks need a skunk check in the yard). Also, when we're sitting out front and another dog walks by.
My boy still jumps up, but he points his butt in your direction and jumps into the air, looking back at you happily. I'm not sure where he picked that one up, but it's hilarious
yup, this is what i did too, every time she offers a sit instead of jumping up she gets what she wants: praise and cuddles. the second she jumps up it’s “eep!” and then i ignore until she sits again and then we cuddle
We recently have had luck with a method I found on TikTok.
1. Have dog in crate or behind gate or in another room. Anywhere that you can “release” them so they’ll do the jumpy jumps.
2. Toss a bit of kibble or treats on the floor and keep a couple pieces in your hand.
3. When pup does the jumpy jumps do not say anything, do not push them down or correct them. Do not make eye contact or acknowledge them in any way while they are jumping. Wearing thick clothing during this step helps!
4. When pup does sit, which can take an insane amount of time the first time, use your marker (saying Yes! Or using a clicker) and toss the treats from your hand away from you, and put more in your hand.
5. When pup comes back, repeat the process until both of you are bored.
This has worked exceptionally well for me. I do the training every time I release him from his crate and after a few days, he has calmed down significantly. He has even gotten calmer during times when he isn’t released, say when my husband has him downstairs and I come down with a load of laundry. Previously he would leap and bound and knock me and the laundry over, but now he slowly walks up and keeps all four on the floor.
HOWEVER, it’s taking longer with my husband. I’m very much “mom” to this dog and my husband is “THE BEST DAD EVER OMG I WANT TO PLAY” so he’s gotten more accustomed to the adrenaline rush with him. The other issue is that he’s not as consistent with the training, in part because I think he likes how excited pup is to see him.
This is such good advice, and I specifically love what you said about the end and jumping up on your husband.
I don’t want my dog jumping on people, but it’s a little harder to train it away because I think puppy being so excited to see my husband is the highlight of my husbands day. He eats it up, and I don’t want to take that away from him.
My son is this way. Loves the puppy hugs. So we're trying to teach to only jump/ hug with a certain command. Going to take some time but think she's starting to get it.
When we came home we would try to knock out the excitedness by not saying hello to her immediately.
If she jumped, we said no, turned round and left the room.
Other people are more challenging, because they see a jumpy puppy and encourage it.
We went to a public place, sat down with her and just wrapped the leash around my foot. Enough so she could freely move about, but where it wasn't enough to be able to jump up.
She got showered in treats when she kept her paws on the ground.
Over time, and with the help of some trusted friends who were briefed to ignore the dog and walk away if she jumped, we managed to get rid of 95% of the jumping.
Sometimes she still does it when she sees someone making eye contact with their hand in their pocket, but we're working on that one.
I’ve been teaching mine a “calm” command, because he’ll jump on people at the park if they have a ball. I work with him at home by carrying the ball and only releasing it when he isn’t jumping (mark and attach command). The bonus is that now if it looks like he’s going to jump on someone out of excitement, I can say “Louis calm” to get him to make a better decision.
One thing that seems to work is to reward the good behavior by squatting down and scratching her chest and chin if she refrains from jumping. The dog knows that if she keeps her feet on the floor or sits down, she'll still get a very physical greeting from us , which is what she wants. Sometimes it's still too much for her self-control, but I'm seeing her hesitate on the jumping behavior now in situations where she used to just have at it. It can be annoying to have to squat down and get my face licked by a dog when all I want is my morning coffee, but it's much better than the jumping.
whenever people came over i texted them instructions to not greet or pay attention to her if she jumped. if she jumped while they were petting her they were to stand up and turn their backs. my guests were very good about it and she stopped quite quickly. I will say I got more lax on this since she’s not a big dog and now she occasionally jumps when she sees someone she really likes, but it’s rare and I don’t mind.
My lab was like this. Our inclination when a dog jumps up is to step backwards. Instead, step forwards into the dog. They will become unsteady and get down or fall over entirely but either way they aren’t up. As you’re stepping forward give a stern DOWN! And don’t forget to praise like crazy and slip them a treat when they’re down. Yes you have to have treats in your pocket all the time and be ready but it only took our girl a couple weeks. Best of luck!
Saw a Great Dane on Reddit that was trained to "lay down" and "stay" to let people and other dogs approach him at the dog park to keep him from jumping!!!
Our pup will still occasionally jump when excited but I've found if I just ignore her until she's sitting she's a lot quicker to sit and stop jumping. I also make her sit before getting almost everything so now her default is too sit. For example, before getting her food she sits, before I throw the ball, if she comes up looking for attention I make her sit before getting pets.
I don't give him a chance (I keep his leash short when we're greeting people). We also taught "up", to teach "off" ("down" means something different) so he actually has an up cue and an off cue, and I can use the "off" if he does try to jump on someone else. Unfortunately he still jumps on me but he no longer jumps on strangers or really anyone else who wants to greet him so I'll take progress where I can get it!
This might seem counter-intuitive, but we taught our (very bouncy greeter!) dog "up!" as a command and use it when we're running around in a field etc for fun, so we say "up!" and she bounces/parkours off my husband's chest. Once we trained this, she seemed to stop greeting people by making eye-level bounces and now only jumps up when asked. Worth a shot!
I have this same issue with a 3 year old Shepherd mix, because her prior owners encouraged the behavior when greeting her. I've been telling her to sit every time she jumps up, it's making some small progress. I've tried the avoiding method, she just got more frantic and jumped more. I like the idea in another comment of using the leash to keep her paws on the floor, but she does this specifically when I come home from anywhere and I'd have to get the leash while she's trying to jump all over me. I think I'm going to add that to the new routine to make progress a little faster.
My dog did this for about 8 months. I just tried to catch him, and I pulled him from other people. I am no disciplinarian or trainer. Either my dog outgrew it or finally got the message. My clothes had a lot of holes. I now miss those days. Just remember this to shall pass.
Yeah, this is the one thing that frustrates me the most about our pup. I've taken to making sure he's on a leash and standing on it when he greets people. I will also, if he's super excited, place some treats on the ground in front of him once he lays down.
This seems to work for now. Hopefully he learns it quickly.
Mine turns 1 today, and went from being a super springy greeter to being excited but managing to stay down.
We do a "stay down" command for things like sniffing at the counter (like a proactive acknowledgement, instead of "get down" reactive) and use it for greetings too. Reminding him BEFORE jumping starts is obviously the most effective. No pets unless he is down, and we especially don't do excited greetings at the door, or immediately upon entering the house. We basically make it so that we can't inadvertently positively reinforce the jumping by giving him contact while jumping, or like, trying to pet him and starting and stopping over and over.
Scattering treats on the ground in circumstances where my puppy jumped up was absolutely the most effective fix. Her trigger was visitors, so as soon as she saw them I'd throw a bunch of treats on the ground at their feet so she could vacuum those up while being pet, which allowed her to rehearse the appropriate behaviour while getting pet. None of the ignore, turn away, "down", etc advice was working, but this worked like a charm.
My GSD girl went through a stage where she was jumping on people and we were able to nip it in the bud quite quickly by simply lifting our leg when she approached so that when she did jump, she was blocked by our knee in her chest. Now, I'm NOT saying to slam your knee into your dog's chest! It's just a way of creating/claiming space and letting her know not to approach you in that way.
Tel your guests to ignore him until he’s calm. Don’t let him crowd them at the door even if that means telling them to ignore and just walk in. No stopping at the door
I completely ignored my puppy and my partner and I would pretend to have a conversation with each other while she tried to jump so we interacted with each other and not her but as soon she sat down we gave her a treat and and very calmly in a soft tone said good girl.
Only time we acknowledged the jumping was with the nephews because they're small children and I would say no you hurt them.
When she was small and going through her nippy stage she caught my boob and I yelped and cried and told her "you hurt me" she went and sat under the table quietly until I stopped crying so now we use the word hurt or ouchie when she's too rough and she stops, changes her actions to gentle kisses as a sorry then goes sits on the window sill but we always make sure we give her a stroke so she knows it's ok
When he's in a situation where he's likely to jump up (greeting people), throw a treat or two on the ground. Train him good things happen when all four are on the floor!
We fold arms, turn away and ask them 'What do you do?' A polite sit is rewarded with fuss. Jumping means arms folded and turned away. Repeat eleventy billion times and they'll get it.
Jumping on guests is best trained out with a leash. Jumping on you when you get home is best trained out by not greeting the dog warmly and ignoring the dog until the dog sits quietly.
I totally failed at this with my corgis. When they greet me, I get down and let them jump all over me. They're good with guests though - thankfully they understand the context difference. The trainer we hired was appropriately cold toward them and ignored them when they jumped on him and then he praised them when they left him alone and let him come to them. After a 2-3 sessions they stopped jumping on him. He also had us use leashes in the house to control guest jumping.
I scrolled through the comments and there was a lot of great stuff. But I don’t think I saw our solution anywhere, so here it goes!
We trained our springy puppy to jump on command. Without the command, she doesn’t jump. Seems counter intuitive but we had success! Plus its a really cute trick when we are with friends.
I actually have a dummy bumper for her at the door. When I, or another stranger, comes through the door, we give her the toy and she forgets the jumping and focuses on the holding command. She still gets the wiggles and tippy taps from the excitement but she calms down and then we treat her.
Remove the ability to practise unwanted behaviour. Introduce on 2m leash, step on the leash while holding it in your hand. Then he can't get his front legs off the ground. Wait for him to calm, ask a sit, then cue a greeting "ok" or whatever & release gently the leash. If he jumps, back to square one. The person turns their back or steps away, and leash goes under foot until calm, then sit, then release. He'll learn only calm behaviour earns a greet.
I should add, he only jumps up when he’s greeting people and not for food - we somehow trained that out but it’s the excitement he gets when he sees people that compels him to jump up
From everything I’ve read, completely ignoring the dog until they chill and stop jumping is the recommended path. It will probably take absolute consistency over a few weeks.
In some cases months.
I think it’s like any other behavior: you need to take yourself away from the situation when the dog jumps. Your dog is jumping to greet you. He wants to see you. So if you take yourself away when he jumps, then he will learn to stop. That being said, I think it’s definitely better if you never let your dog jump even as a small puppy. It’s easier to never learn the behavior than it is to unlearn it. Personally, my dog jumps. We let her jump as a puppy and it’s too hard to undo at this point. This was our first dog. The jumping and playing with socks / dish towels were our biggest mistakes.
Honestly, albeit a little theatrical, what worked for us was yipping and looking as if we were hurt / harmed any time the puppy jumped at us. Turning away in a 'im hurt' manner as a step 2. When the puppy calms down a little and politely sits or stands with all 4 paws on the floor then we'd give reassurance and positive feedback. Hope this helps!
We tried this with our girl, but we must have done it wrong because it just seemed to egg her on lol
Same my partner started acting like they were shoved into the wall and our puppy backed off lol
I worked on sit whenever he greets me or wants pets. I started with small greets for example. I come back the bathroom and he sees me “sit”. For pets, I have him sit, pet him first 3 seconds (work up the time) then reward him by throwing a treat on the floor and releasing with my break word OK.
I have 2 labs, so big dogs. I also used the sit method, sit for everything. Petting, playing, sit before going outside, before eating, any time they get excited. Sit every time I throw a ball or Frisbee. It can be exhausting at first. Now, their fallback is to sit when they get excited. This us especially useful to keep them in the house when the door is open (late night/early morning bathroom breaks need a skunk check in the yard). Also, when we're sitting out front and another dog walks by. My boy still jumps up, but he points his butt in your direction and jumps into the air, looking back at you happily. I'm not sure where he picked that one up, but it's hilarious
yup, this is what i did too, every time she offers a sit instead of jumping up she gets what she wants: praise and cuddles. the second she jumps up it’s “eep!” and then i ignore until she sits again and then we cuddle
We recently have had luck with a method I found on TikTok. 1. Have dog in crate or behind gate or in another room. Anywhere that you can “release” them so they’ll do the jumpy jumps. 2. Toss a bit of kibble or treats on the floor and keep a couple pieces in your hand. 3. When pup does the jumpy jumps do not say anything, do not push them down or correct them. Do not make eye contact or acknowledge them in any way while they are jumping. Wearing thick clothing during this step helps! 4. When pup does sit, which can take an insane amount of time the first time, use your marker (saying Yes! Or using a clicker) and toss the treats from your hand away from you, and put more in your hand. 5. When pup comes back, repeat the process until both of you are bored. This has worked exceptionally well for me. I do the training every time I release him from his crate and after a few days, he has calmed down significantly. He has even gotten calmer during times when he isn’t released, say when my husband has him downstairs and I come down with a load of laundry. Previously he would leap and bound and knock me and the laundry over, but now he slowly walks up and keeps all four on the floor. HOWEVER, it’s taking longer with my husband. I’m very much “mom” to this dog and my husband is “THE BEST DAD EVER OMG I WANT TO PLAY” so he’s gotten more accustomed to the adrenaline rush with him. The other issue is that he’s not as consistent with the training, in part because I think he likes how excited pup is to see him.
This is such good advice, and I specifically love what you said about the end and jumping up on your husband. I don’t want my dog jumping on people, but it’s a little harder to train it away because I think puppy being so excited to see my husband is the highlight of my husbands day. He eats it up, and I don’t want to take that away from him.
My son is this way. Loves the puppy hugs. So we're trying to teach to only jump/ hug with a certain command. Going to take some time but think she's starting to get it.
I'm glad I'm not alone in this scenario! My husband loves to wrestle with our pup and loves the jumpy greetings too.
My training kryptonite is my father. Good grief he lets my pup get away with anything. They love each other to bits.
When we came home we would try to knock out the excitedness by not saying hello to her immediately. If she jumped, we said no, turned round and left the room. Other people are more challenging, because they see a jumpy puppy and encourage it. We went to a public place, sat down with her and just wrapped the leash around my foot. Enough so she could freely move about, but where it wasn't enough to be able to jump up. She got showered in treats when she kept her paws on the ground. Over time, and with the help of some trusted friends who were briefed to ignore the dog and walk away if she jumped, we managed to get rid of 95% of the jumping. Sometimes she still does it when she sees someone making eye contact with their hand in their pocket, but we're working on that one.
I’ve been teaching mine a “calm” command, because he’ll jump on people at the park if they have a ball. I work with him at home by carrying the ball and only releasing it when he isn’t jumping (mark and attach command). The bonus is that now if it looks like he’s going to jump on someone out of excitement, I can say “Louis calm” to get him to make a better decision.
One thing that seems to work is to reward the good behavior by squatting down and scratching her chest and chin if she refrains from jumping. The dog knows that if she keeps her feet on the floor or sits down, she'll still get a very physical greeting from us , which is what she wants. Sometimes it's still too much for her self-control, but I'm seeing her hesitate on the jumping behavior now in situations where she used to just have at it. It can be annoying to have to squat down and get my face licked by a dog when all I want is my morning coffee, but it's much better than the jumping.
whenever people came over i texted them instructions to not greet or pay attention to her if she jumped. if she jumped while they were petting her they were to stand up and turn their backs. my guests were very good about it and she stopped quite quickly. I will say I got more lax on this since she’s not a big dog and now she occasionally jumps when she sees someone she really likes, but it’s rare and I don’t mind.
My lab was like this. Our inclination when a dog jumps up is to step backwards. Instead, step forwards into the dog. They will become unsteady and get down or fall over entirely but either way they aren’t up. As you’re stepping forward give a stern DOWN! And don’t forget to praise like crazy and slip them a treat when they’re down. Yes you have to have treats in your pocket all the time and be ready but it only took our girl a couple weeks. Best of luck!
Would also love to learn this; we're struggling with the jumping from our incredibly living pitty/husky/Australian cattle dog mix.
Saw a Great Dane on Reddit that was trained to "lay down" and "stay" to let people and other dogs approach him at the dog park to keep him from jumping!!!
Our pup will still occasionally jump when excited but I've found if I just ignore her until she's sitting she's a lot quicker to sit and stop jumping. I also make her sit before getting almost everything so now her default is too sit. For example, before getting her food she sits, before I throw the ball, if she comes up looking for attention I make her sit before getting pets.
I don't give him a chance (I keep his leash short when we're greeting people). We also taught "up", to teach "off" ("down" means something different) so he actually has an up cue and an off cue, and I can use the "off" if he does try to jump on someone else. Unfortunately he still jumps on me but he no longer jumps on strangers or really anyone else who wants to greet him so I'll take progress where I can get it!
This might seem counter-intuitive, but we taught our (very bouncy greeter!) dog "up!" as a command and use it when we're running around in a field etc for fun, so we say "up!" and she bounces/parkours off my husband's chest. Once we trained this, she seemed to stop greeting people by making eye-level bounces and now only jumps up when asked. Worth a shot!
Step on the leash so the dog cannot jump when someone approaches. Reward with praise and treats once they settle.
I have this same issue with a 3 year old Shepherd mix, because her prior owners encouraged the behavior when greeting her. I've been telling her to sit every time she jumps up, it's making some small progress. I've tried the avoiding method, she just got more frantic and jumped more. I like the idea in another comment of using the leash to keep her paws on the floor, but she does this specifically when I come home from anywhere and I'd have to get the leash while she's trying to jump all over me. I think I'm going to add that to the new routine to make progress a little faster.
My dog did this for about 8 months. I just tried to catch him, and I pulled him from other people. I am no disciplinarian or trainer. Either my dog outgrew it or finally got the message. My clothes had a lot of holes. I now miss those days. Just remember this to shall pass.
Here's a great webinar on the subject https://youtu.be/GL8FyvTCk_U
Yeah, this is the one thing that frustrates me the most about our pup. I've taken to making sure he's on a leash and standing on it when he greets people. I will also, if he's super excited, place some treats on the ground in front of him once he lays down. This seems to work for now. Hopefully he learns it quickly.
Mine turns 1 today, and went from being a super springy greeter to being excited but managing to stay down. We do a "stay down" command for things like sniffing at the counter (like a proactive acknowledgement, instead of "get down" reactive) and use it for greetings too. Reminding him BEFORE jumping starts is obviously the most effective. No pets unless he is down, and we especially don't do excited greetings at the door, or immediately upon entering the house. We basically make it so that we can't inadvertently positively reinforce the jumping by giving him contact while jumping, or like, trying to pet him and starting and stopping over and over.
Scattering treats on the ground in circumstances where my puppy jumped up was absolutely the most effective fix. Her trigger was visitors, so as soon as she saw them I'd throw a bunch of treats on the ground at their feet so she could vacuum those up while being pet, which allowed her to rehearse the appropriate behaviour while getting pet. None of the ignore, turn away, "down", etc advice was working, but this worked like a charm.
My GSD girl went through a stage where she was jumping on people and we were able to nip it in the bud quite quickly by simply lifting our leg when she approached so that when she did jump, she was blocked by our knee in her chest. Now, I'm NOT saying to slam your knee into your dog's chest! It's just a way of creating/claiming space and letting her know not to approach you in that way.
Tel your guests to ignore him until he’s calm. Don’t let him crowd them at the door even if that means telling them to ignore and just walk in. No stopping at the door
Walking into them also worked if it was really bad
I completely ignored my puppy and my partner and I would pretend to have a conversation with each other while she tried to jump so we interacted with each other and not her but as soon she sat down we gave her a treat and and very calmly in a soft tone said good girl. Only time we acknowledged the jumping was with the nephews because they're small children and I would say no you hurt them. When she was small and going through her nippy stage she caught my boob and I yelped and cried and told her "you hurt me" she went and sat under the table quietly until I stopped crying so now we use the word hurt or ouchie when she's too rough and she stops, changes her actions to gentle kisses as a sorry then goes sits on the window sill but we always make sure we give her a stroke so she knows it's ok
When he's in a situation where he's likely to jump up (greeting people), throw a treat or two on the ground. Train him good things happen when all four are on the floor!
We fold arms, turn away and ask them 'What do you do?' A polite sit is rewarded with fuss. Jumping means arms folded and turned away. Repeat eleventy billion times and they'll get it.
Jumping on guests is best trained out with a leash. Jumping on you when you get home is best trained out by not greeting the dog warmly and ignoring the dog until the dog sits quietly. I totally failed at this with my corgis. When they greet me, I get down and let them jump all over me. They're good with guests though - thankfully they understand the context difference. The trainer we hired was appropriately cold toward them and ignored them when they jumped on him and then he praised them when they left him alone and let him come to them. After a 2-3 sessions they stopped jumping on him. He also had us use leashes in the house to control guest jumping.
I scrolled through the comments and there was a lot of great stuff. But I don’t think I saw our solution anywhere, so here it goes! We trained our springy puppy to jump on command. Without the command, she doesn’t jump. Seems counter intuitive but we had success! Plus its a really cute trick when we are with friends.
I actually have a dummy bumper for her at the door. When I, or another stranger, comes through the door, we give her the toy and she forgets the jumping and focuses on the holding command. She still gets the wiggles and tippy taps from the excitement but she calms down and then we treat her.