For the last two months, we’ve focused on ways to help dogs greet each other (Part 1) and ways to help them greet us as their owners (Part 2). This month we are taking a look at ways to help dogs greet other people when we are out and about with them in the real world. As with the other approaches discussed in this series, we recognize the complexities involved when dogs are learning how to negotiate highly arousing and distracting things in their environment. Behavior is complicated. One of the first things we like to do is to try and understand what is going on, from the animal’s point of view, before addressing how to change the behavior. That is what we will do for this third installment of the Dog-People Greetings Series. What is going on from the dog’s point of view when they greet people they meet on leash when out and about? Primarily we’re talking about how dogs jump on people when they are excited to meet them. We’ll tackle how to deal with these challenging behaviors in Part 4. Today we’re going to focus on why dogs do this.
An owner is out on a walk with her dog.
The dog is leashed and the owner is using a front clip harness because it makes pulling harder to accomplish for the dog.
While walking down the side walk, the owner and the dog spot a person in the distance walking towards them. The owner chokes up on the leash in preparation, and the dog, smiling, starts to pull toward the person.
The approaching person reaches the dog and owner. The dog, smiling gleefully, jumps up to greet the person.
The dog receives lots of attention from them in the form of pets and affection.
Now, this scenario could have ended with the person being upset about being jumped on too, and most of us have probably witnessed both outcomes at some point. No matter the outcome, many of us would still like to gain some control over this type of behavior from our dogs. The good news is we can teach dogs not to jump up on people with a bit of training. Before we get into that in Part 4, however, let’s continue to dig into why dogs do this in the first place.
Take a look at the following scenario:
My cousin loves football.
My cousin’s favorite team is playing today.
There are only four seconds left on the game clock and my cousin’s team is down by 3 points.
My cousin’s favorite team is about to score.
The ball leaves the quarterback’s hands and is spiraling through the air towards the receiver.
My cousin gets very excited and jumps off the couch screaming in gleeful anticipation.
The receiver catches the ball in the in zone.
Now, dear trainer, my cousin’s mother would like to keep her son’s butt on the couch and screaming to a minimum whenever he’s watching TV. To make the comparison to dogs complete, let’s say you cannot use language to ask anything of my cousin. Outside of using duct tape, what do you do?
The parallels between this scenario and how some dogs greet other people on walks is remarkable. Here’s what they have in common.
The Conditions That Are Set
In both of these scenarios, the organism in question is aroused (AROUSAL). There is some event occurring in the organism’s immediate environment that is eliciting physiological arousal in both organisms. This happens for a variety of reasons. I’ll discuss two common ones.
Animals are often easily aroused by something favorable they have been deprived of for some period (DEPRIVATION).
- So, the dog may have been deprived of attention, say, from people other than his owner. Upon seeing a person, the dog then becomes aroused and excited.
- My cousin may have been deprived of seeing his favorite team win a game, and therefore becomes aroused and excited when that happens.
Animals are also aroused when they detect something in their environment that they have previously learned causes good things for them to happen (PRIOR LEARNING).
- When I get home and I smell chocolate chip cookies, for example, I get excited and my mouth starts to water.
- If a dog has learned that people do things that the dog likes, like offering food and giving pets, dogs learn to anticipate that outcome when they see or are near people.
- My cousin likes hanging out with other people, so when his football team wins, he gets to watch them again in the future, with all of his friends.
So, we have an aroused animal because it has detected something favorable in its environment, and the animal has been deprived of that thing for some period of time – AND this animal has learned that the thing it has detected typically provides something to the animal that the animal likes. Hmmm. Why would it not jump all over it? Imagine this process playing out on a regular basis, each time the dog becomes even more excited to get over to the human so that they can jump up and get some attention. A dog in this situation could end up receiving an awful lot of reinforcement for jumping up, making retraining this response even harder.
What else causes dogs to jump up on people? There are probably lots of reasons, some we may never understand. I’ve heard the theory that because dogs typically greet each other face to face they want to get up to our faces to greet us. Though I’ve heard this many times over the years, I’ve never seen any research demonstrating that it is in fact why dogs do this. You’ll also hear that the “proper” way for dogs to greet each other is to sniff each other’s butts. This seems to contradict the face to face theory. I think it’s enough of an explanation that dogs who like people can gain access to attention when they jump on us. It is awfully difficult to not give attention to a dog that jumps on you. Even if you say “Off” or “Leave It”, many dogs are not deterred by these cues – sometimes because they have not actually been taught what these cues mean in this context, and sometimes because the reinforcement they seek is actually realized (some form of attention is attained), despite the cues to get “Off” or “Leave It”.
One of the reasons some dogs persist in jumping up on people to greet them is that the process to greet humans is essentially presented to them as a Simon Says game. Think about it, when we get a puppy, every time someone comes near the puppy, it’s like saying, “Simon Says, ‘jump up to greet!’” The puppy jumps up and gains access to attention and fun. We don’t mind when they are small goofy little puppies, so the puppy gets a lot of reinforcement greeting people who come near. As times goes by and the dog gets bigger, people coming up to greet the dog is like saying “jump up to greet” without the Simon Says part. They jump up, just as they were taught to do. The only thing that’s changed is that the people are not enjoying it anymore. Saying “Off” is like saying, “But we didn’t say Simon Says!” We pat our heads during the Simon Says game for the same reason. A string of positive outcomes for paying attention to what Simon Says sets you up to perform the same way when Simon is silent, but the prompt is still being offered. So, we respond by performing the same behavior when Simon did Say, just like our dogs do when people are close enough to greet. What this tells us is that the history of reinforcement is more important than cues like “Off” and “Leave It” to dogs that learned to jump up in this way. What has become the cue for jumping on people is the approach of people. Opportunity is, quite literally, within reach! In short, a past history of positive outcomes can easily nullify “Off” and “Leave It”, at least until more times is spent to help the dog learn what those cues mean and that they mean what they mean in the particular context of greeting people.
And that’s what we’ll cover next time in Part 4, how to tackle teaching dogs to greet people when out and about without jumping!
