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What Do I Do To Get My Dog To Stop Jumping Up On Guests?

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What do I do when my dog jumps up on guests
What do I do when my dog jumps up on guests

“When people come over my dog jumps up on them as soon as they walk through the front door.  What do I do to get my dog to stop jumping up on guests?”

–GM

Every time Colby or I come home or if we have company over our yellow lab, Archer, turns into a Jack Russell Terrier at the front door.

He gets really excited and jumps straight up landing on whatever or whoever is below him (usually it’s poor Stetson).

We wanted to break Archer of this habit, so Colby signed us up for the “Door Manners” class.

It was a one-time class on a Saturday afternoon. Two other dogs were in the class with Archer and I, so we received a lot of individual attention. The instructor was awesome and walked us through her Think-Plan-Do strategy.

What Do I Do To Get My Dog To Stop Jumping Up On Guests?

Think.

The first thing we did was figure out what was the undesirable behavior that we wanted to fix.

For Archer we focused on his jumping when people come to the front door. Most of the time the undesirable behavior is encouraged by our interaction with our dog.

For example, when Archer jumps I would often make eye contact with him telling him to stop or guests would push him off of them.

We, as humans, see this is as trying to cure him of his jumping by telling him it’s the wrong behavior, but as a dog he may see the eye contact and the physical contact as positive reinforcement and attention prompting him to do it again and again and again.

We also looked at the undesirable behavior from a safety perspective. Could anyone (or any animal) get hurt from Archer jumping?

If Archer were to jump on a child or an elderly adult he could definitely hurt them, cause them to fall or at the very least scare them.

He has scratched my legs multiple times and he could also injure himself or the other dogs if he were to land awkwardly.

What is going to be our end goal? Not jumping (obviously), but how will we get Archer to not do it?

With the help of our instructor we decided when company comes over our goal is to have him “go to his mat” (a down-stay on a predetermined dog bed, blanket, towel, or mat) till we say it’s okay for him to get up and calmly greet everyone.

So what do we do to help cure Archer of his Jack Russell tendencies?

What should you do to stop your puppy from jumping up? Think-Plan-Do!
What should you do to stop your puppy from jumping up? Think-Plan-Do!

Plan.

Archer isn’t going to stop jumping immediately. It’s going to take a lot of time, patience, and practice to get him to our end goal.

Until we get to our desired behavior of having him “go to his mat” when company comes over, we have to have a backup plan.

Distance and restraint is key for Archer in the days (or weeks…or months) leading up to his “perfect” door manners.

Having Archer a healthy distance away from the humans so he can’t jump on people or having him on a tie-down or a leash will help alleviate the problem until we are able to perfect it.

Having an immediate plan is especially important if safety is an issue with your undesirable behavior.

1. Duration

So…how do we go about training Archer to not jump? We need to start from square one.

Fortunately Archer knows his “go to your mat” command from his obedience classes, so our first steps are to add duration, distance, and eventually distractions.

We had Archer “go to his mat” and would treat him for staying there for one second, then two seconds, then back to one second, then three seconds, etc. and would hopefully build up to 20 seconds.

The instructor made it clear that if you try to push your dog too hard, too quickly (i.e. trying to get them to down-stay for 10 seconds on their first try) it could reinforce the negative behavior of them getting up off the mat, so start slow and make sure your dog is successful.

If they start to get up off their mat, go back and treat them for staying for one second.

2. Distance

Same goes with distance: start close to your dog and treat him for his down-stay, move one step back and treat, move two steps back and treat, and then alter your distances always making sure your dog is successful.

I usually stand in front of Archer and step backwards when practicing distance, but I have to remember to step to the right and left and stand to the side of him to vary our training.

3. Distraction

Lastly, once Archer’s duration and distance is mastered, we will add in distractions.

Distractions come in all shapes and sizes.

From noise distractions (clapping, knocking on a wall/door, talking, yelling, and eventually a door bell), motion distractions (people walking/running by, toys rolling around, humans sitting down/standing up, jumping jacks, etc.), dog distractions (having other dogs around, dogs playing, barking), and out-of-sight distractions (removing myself from Archer’s line of sight for an amount of time).

Again, the key is to not introduce too much too quickly to your dog: one small distraction at a time.

And if it seems to be too much excitement, you could also put the distraction farther away from your dog to help keep his focus on you and staying on his mat.

Once we have distractions conquered, we can work on having people come over and having Archer “go to his mat”.

To start we may have the mat far away from the door (or maybe in another room if necessary) to help with the excitement of running up to the person and then gradually bringing the mat to it’s permanent spot in the house (yet to be determined).

Do.

All right…so it’s time to start implementing everything! Archer is currently working on the beginning stages of distractions with the help of Linus, Stetson and Raven.

Dog distractions are his Achilles heel because of his strong urge to play, so this is his hardest test.

Hopefully in the coming weeks or months we will be able to report on Archer’s progress.

I’m crossing my fingers we’ll be talking about how he goes to his mat when company comes over and doesn’t jump on us or our guests. Until then…we keep practicing.

Here are some more tips from ThatMutt.com on how to stop your dog from jumping up on people.

How about you guys?  Does your dog jump up on you or your guests?  Do you have a plan for training your dog?  Tell us about your dog in the comment section below.

What do you do when your puppy jumps up on guests?
What do you do when your puppy jumps up on guests?

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33 Comments

  1. My lab is almost 11 months old and gets very excited with visitors. Not only does she jump but she mouths when she gets excited. While I am working on the ‘go to you mat’ command, can you please provide some tips for how to get my puppy to stop mouthing? This is the only time she mouths, when visitors want to pet her or say “hi” to her.
    Thank you,

  2. A step-by-step video-tutorial for “go to your mat” would be great! Looking forward to it !

  3. Unfortunately, we don’t have a tutorial for “go to your mat”. I’ll see if I can get a step by step and maybe a video up for you on the blog.

  4. We have a 13 month old daughter and a 3.5 month old lab mix who loves to jump, nip and steal her toys. I think this command would be helpful when he gets over excited towards her. How do you start with the ‘go to your mat’? Thanks!

  5. These are some great tips on how to get your dog to stop jumping on your guests. I’ve rarely seen anyone fix this issue and am glad you made a post about it. Will have to share it with my friends who have dogs.

  6. We just got a 13 week old puppy. We are starting crate training and the sleep on the floor next to the crate trick worked remarkably. My question is, how many nights should we do this?

  7. We’ve worked with puppies and adult dogs and think-plan-do would work for training pretty much any age dog or puppy.

  8. Sometimes I do the same thing and don’t think through my dog training problems. I really need to take a step back sometimes and think, plan, do 🙂

  9. I love your steps: think – plan – do. So many people get frustrated with their dog because they haven’t thought through the problem. When you analyze the problem and marry that with always wanting to give positive reinforcement rather than negative, it makes perfect sense to incorporate the ‘go to mat’.
    I also like the way you implement in small steps. – build one success on top of another.
    Thanks for the great post!

    Donna
    pethangout.com

  10. YES! We like using “Go to mat” when guests come over, but at the moment Archer gets a little too excited to see new people.

  11. I’ve noticed Archer is pretty good about sitting and waiting with me, but the story is a little different with guests. It’s a work in progress.

  12. My dog stopped jumping on people after I taught him only if he sits I’ll give affection. But now he pulls guests by their clothes. I’ll try the go to mat trick. Thanks. Great article.

  13. Good luck with your puppy! Our past service dog puppies have been good about not jumping up on guests. Archer is the anomaly, but we’re working on it.

  14. Training dogs is an exercise in patience. One thing I would think about with your dog is what are you rewarding her for? “She won’t stop barking until everyone says hi and gives her a rub.” There’s a good chance she has learned that barking gets her positive attention from guests. You might consider setting up practice sessions with her to work on her barking.

  15. Thank you for this! My dog has been doing this since puppyhood and we have never gotten serious about working with her on it because she’s only 30 pounds. This gives me some motivation!

  16. Thanks Lindsay! When we did the exercise in class we didn’t release the dog. We were practicing “duration” so the instructor told us if the dog gets up, get them back on their mat, but don’t treat them for going back to their mat. Then start at square one with a one second down-stay. Good luck with Remy! Let us know how/if it works!!

  17. Ali, you should write more posts! I thought this was so helpful and I will be using these ideas with my puppy Remy. One question … you know how you said you would treat every second, then two seconds, 3 and up to 20 seconds … do you release the pup each time or just go back and give a treat and hope he continues staying the whole time? I suppose it depends on the pup and his skills.

  18. Our yorkie doesn’t jump on people when they come in the house, but she barks and runs to the door when the doorbell rings. We even told our close friends not to ring the doorbell and just walk in when we are expecting them, but she still barks when she hears the door open. She won’t stop barking until everyone says hi and gives her a rub. I will have to give your training suggestions a try. Thanks for the great article.

  19. I like the “paws on the floor” idea. Maybe I’ll have to implement that one into our training routine. Just the other day Archer and Raven surprised me when a friend and her 4 year old daughter came over. I was in the backyard when they entered the house…no barking, no jumping from any of the dogs which made me think maybe I’m adding another level of anxiety/stress when guests come over that causes the dogs to get overly excited and start jumping around. Something for me to think about.

  20. So this is lame, but I taught my dogs “paws on the floor” and “stay down” when guests come over and when we come home. All of our dogs are pretty good at staying down except Zoey who jumps up to me all the time, but rarely on guests.

    For our dogs, it’s the barking (Zoey also). I don’t mind the heads up that company has arrived; it’s the continued barking that is hard. I’ve learned to acknowledge Zoey and tell her “it’s okay” and she begins to calm down.

    Having a heads up for guests makes it easier for all of us, because I can take the dogs for a walk and give Zoey something for her anxiety.

  21. In the early days we used to have Stetson and Linus “go to your bed” when guests came over and it surprisingly worked very well with those two. The distraction of multiple dogs in the house makes it very difficult. I’m thinking working on getting each dog consistent with “go to your mat” individually may be the best way to approach this with Archer.

  22. The “go to your mat” command might work also for dogs that tend to run out of the front door.

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