Last month we took a look at how we make Dog-Dog greeting as comfortable as possible in the Doggy Business LLC play groups. This month, we’re going to follow up with Dog-People greetings, and specifically address jumping. Why do dogs jump when they’re greeting people? The answer is – for many, many reasons. That’s part of why it can be difficult to stop jumping. What are some of the common reasons dogs jump? For many dogs, jumping up is their favorite way to greet people, whether it’s their owners or new friends. They get attention (this may be petting, pushing the dog down, or looking at them and saying “off”) and it also may just be inherently fun. For other dogs, jumping may be related to social pressure or anxiety. For them greetings are stressful and jumping may help to relieve anxiety or could be part of an appeasement display. Other dogs may be frightened of new people, and barking, jumping, and lunging at them may have been a very successful strategy that they’ve learned to make the person back away.
The bottom line for all of the reasons that cause a dog to jump however, is that the jumping is reinforcing to the dog. The dogs are getting something out of it. The jumping may be a great attention-seeking strategy, it may help to release anxiety, it may cause scary people to move away, or it could just be inherently fun to the dog. The jumping was reinforced, and, as we’ve discussed previously, behavior that is reinforced will happen more frequently and/or with greater intensity. That means the jumping is more likely to happen the next time the dog is in a similar situation.
So, what are some solutions? The strategy that we’ve found to be most effective is to try to change the picture of the relevant antecedent events that cause the jumping. In other words, determine when and under what circumstances your dog tends to jump up. Once you understand the situations that cause the jumping and what is reinforcing the behavior, then you can change the way you deliver access to that reinforcement to prevent the jumping from happening. For example, how might you present yourself to your dog in a way that elicits behavior other than jumping? For now, try to discover what consequences are maintaining your dog’s jumping behavior.
Next month, in Part 2 of our discussion of Dog-People Greetings, we’ll address the specifics of how to begin to change the behavior of jumping during greetings. We’ll focus on dogs who jump during greetings because they’re happy to see you (versus anxious without you). We’ll describe the techniques we recommend to change how a dog greets people, and also discuss why some commonly recommended techniques, such as ignoring your dog, may not work. Until then, happy training!
