Over the last few months, our Behavior of the Month articles have focused on Dog-People Greetings and the reasons many dogs like to jump on people when they meet them. During this series on greetings, we’ve been specifically discussing dogs who jump up because they like people, in contrast to those dogs who jump up on people because they might be uncomfortable with the person (more on that type of behavior in a future article). For this final article in the Dog-People Greetings series, we want to talk about the specifics of how to tackle teaching dogs to greet people when out and about without jumping! Here’s a common scenario as an example.
You’re walking down the street with your dog on a leash and are approaching another person walking toward you. The person sees your dog and their face brightens. Maybe they’ve had a golden retriever too, and they look like they’d like to stop and say Hi. Sure enough, as the stranger approaches they slow down, eyes locked on your beautiful dog, and say “He’s gorgeous! What’s his name?” By now, your gorgeous dog has jumped up on this person and is receiving continuous petting coupled with a string of “oh, that’s a good boy”s. All the while you’re trying to wrangle your dog so that they don’t get too excited.
In this example, the person is enjoying the dog’s behavior. We’ve all probably seen this happen. But we’ve also seen the exact same behavior directed toward a person who does not like that kind of attention from dogs. And many of us would like to have more control over these kinds of situation, even if we don’t mind our dogs jumping up on people who like saying Hi to dogs when they jump up.
How can we gain control of this behavior so that we can prevent it from happening?
Like most training, we can start by teaching the dog what we want them to do instead. Usually I recommend finding a behavior that your dog can perform that can be reinforced well and that is also inconsistent with jumping up – something like sitting. When greeting a new person, if a dog learns to sit to say Hi, the dog can’t sit and jump up at the same time. So we can teach a dog to sit, and that sitting can lead to the same forms of reinforcement your dog was getting for jumping up.
The trick to this strategy is to take some time to teach it. One of the biggest challenges with this approach is being realistic about any history your dog has had with using jumping to get attention. Many dogs have a strong history of that behavior working quite well to gain access to things they like. You could look at it as a habit that you’d like to change. And like habits that we form, they can be difficult to change quickly.
Think about anytime you’ve tried to change your patterns of eating. Say you typically stop at a cafe to get a coffee and a muffin during your work break every day. Let’s say you wanted to stop getting a muffin every day. The habit that you’ve formed has been reinforced for several weeks. Even though you want to make a change, every day you continue to have that craving for the muffin because your body is used to getting it everyday. The craving was your cue to get it, and the craving is persisting.
The same process occurs with our dogs when they have learned something that we’d like to change. They are using a strategy that has worked quite well for a while. Our job is to set up the training so that they begin to learn a new way to get what they want.
Step One: To teach your dog to sit to greet people instead of jumping on them, start by teaching them to sit on cue when on leash. I recommend doing this in a location where your dog can focus on the training and is less likely to be distracted by other things.
The goal is to walk around this space and cue your dog to sit when you stop walking. When your dog sits, give your dog a treat. Practice this for several sessions, each about 10 minutes long. Try shooting for about four sessions per day for three days. If your dog can already do this with ease, move on to Step Two.
Step Two: Now it’s time to take this same behavior out on your regular walks. Practice the same thing, asking your dog to sit on cue when walking around on leash. Continue giving a treat for sitting. While on a 30 minute walk, aim for doing one of these sits every three to five minutes. Each one of these should get reinforced with a good treat.
Step Three: Now we’ll take this behavior and practice around people. It can help to have a friend as a helper with this step, but you can use the people you see while out and about because, with this step, you are not letting anyone greet your dog yet (I know, but I warned you it takes a while to get to a point where you can reliably control the jumping).
While out and about with your dog, you’ll begin to practice having your dog sit on cue after approaching someone. You will walk your dog towards either your helper or a person in your environment, but you will stop 15 feet away and cue the sit. When your dog sits, give them a treat. Then walk AWAY from the person. Repeat this step, maintaining the 15 foot buffer, up to ten times before switching to 10 feet away. You’re now walking up to the person and having your dog sit once they are 10 feet away.
We want this to work VERY WELL, so don’t push this one. I recommend having the helper person refrain from talking to your dog, or even engaging with them in any way. I’m sure you can guess why, right? Removing distractions during training is extremely helpful!
Is the Environment Training Your Dog?
If you are working with people in your environment and they are proving to be uncooperative, meaning they are engaging your dog and it is distracting to the training, simply move on to another person. People can be friendly. And their friendliness can act as a prompt for your dog to come and get attention. And, when your dog goes to get attention, they might jump up on the person. That’s not the kind of help you need when you embark on this type of training! You dog ends up getting reinforced for the behaviors you are trying to change.
If you are working in real life settings as opposed to with a helper, you can walk towards a stranger and stop when you are 15 feet away, ask for the sit, reward the sit, and then move away from that person and to the next one. Repeat this with about 10 to 15 people. If all goes well, do the same activity but you’ll approach up to 10 feet away. Repeat this with about 10 to 15 other people. Then move to about 8 feet away. Then to 5 feet away. After you reinforce the sit with food, remember to move away from the person.
Step Four: Now you’re close enough for a greeting. For greetings you definitely want to have a helper person to greet your dog (no strangers yet). That way the helper can reinforce your dog when they sit to greet with a piece of tasty food. You’ll move your dog up to greeting distance (about 2 feet away) and ask for the sit. The helper/stranger will reinforce your dog for sitting. You will then move your dog away.
Now that you are close enough to the person that they can interact with your dog, you can repeat this part of the exercise with the same person several times. Do this with as many people as you can up to about 5 to 10 people. After that, you can then ask the people to pet your dog after they sit. The petting takes the place of the food reinforcement. Keep the petting short. And allow petting only when the dog has all four feet on the ground. After a short 2 to 5 second greeting, call your dog away. Then repeat this. You can gradually increase the amount of time the person pets your dog, and you can call your dog away if you need to to prevent any jumping.
Wow, that’s a lot of work! Many avid jumpers I know have had the opposite training, meaning the environment has trained them to jump up more, so this retraining takes some time. If you really want to help your dog with their jumping habit, this method works really well!
