How To Stop Your Dog From Jumping Up

by dogtoysadvisor

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It was cute at first, seeing how excited your dog got around you, him jumping on you each time you got home from work like he hadn’t seen you in weeks!

Overtime, it got harder to deal with. He’ll scratch, ruin your clothes and sometimes you’ll even stumble, trying to walk with an excited pooch jumping around and trying to hang on to you.

And we won’t even mention your friend/family’s reaction whenever they visit.

Learning how to stop a dog from jumping on people is important, not only for your daily interaction with your dog, but also for safety reasons, particularly if we’re talking about a large dog.

But don’t worry, we’re here to help!

Why Dogs Jump On People

There are several reasons why your dog jumps on you or other people when they arrive in your home.

The first and most obvious is excitement.

He’s happy to see you, to greet you, he’s probably been waiting for you anxiously (even if you’ve left him for only a few hour).

Another reason that explains it is, he wants your undivided attention.

He wants you to notice him, to pay attention, he wants to be the center of your world like you’re his.

Also, he wants to know where you’ve been and the best way for him to do that is to sniff every inch of you.

Dogs learn differently than humans and if you understand how their mind works, you can solve MOST dog behavior issues.

Get The Right Gear

After months of despair and trying everything we knew, a friend told us about Adrienne and her online dog training course.

This positive reinforcement-based dog training changed the way we trained our dogs and, best of all, can be used to teach just about anything.

Plus, it worked brilliantly with our dogs, regardless of age, size or personality.

We solved our dogs’ jumping behavior with just one training technique we picked up from this online course that changed our lives.

And, if you want to give your training a boost, there are tools you can use to guarantee you the best results.

We are big fans of the clicker.

Clicker training is very efficient and having your dog associate the action you’re training him to perform to the click sound only makes is simpler for him to understand.

When training your dog to stop jumping on people, you’ll want to use the clicker every time your dogs does what he’s suppose to.

Each time he stops jumping, sits or ignores the person he’s training with, you’ll want to use the clicker so he’ll associate that behavior with the sound.

If the clicker is not your thing, you can always use treats to reward your dog’s good behavior.

Each time he obeys or as soon as he stops jumping, reward him with a tasty treat and make sure he’ll want to do it again and again.

Read also: how to use a clicker to train your dog

How To Train A Dog To Stop Jumping Up

How do you react when you want your dog to stop jumping on you?

We used to yell a lot, get desperate and think we’d never be able to change our dog’s behavior.

People will usually push them away or raise your knees and legs to block their access. Others will use harsher tactics to try and scare him away.

But this can hurt your dog, particularly if he’s overly excited. You might even end up kneeing him of kicking him in the belly or step on his paw.

Plus, the last thing you want your dog to feel around you is fear.

Adrienne’s online training course showed us there was an easier, faster, friendlier way to deal with this behavior.

Here are some positive reinforcement techniques you can use do so it too!

Step 1 – Ignore your dog when he’s jumping

Just ignore him.

Don’t talk to him, don’t even look at him.

That also means no greeting, yelling or using any sort of command. Ideally go a step further, just turn your back to him and if he tries to go around him, just turn again and walk away.

You’ll do this for as long and as often as it takes for him to give up and stay still. Once he does, that’s when you’ll greet him, rewarding the intended behavior.

After a few days of consistently doing this, he’ll learn what you expect him to do and start doing it by himself.

But remember! He at some point he decides to bend the rules and try his luck, you must be consistent!

Step 2 – Teach your dog to sit

After getting your dog to stay still, command hit to sit.

Once he does, even if it’s very temporary, reward him for it as much as possible with attention, cuddles, treats, you name it, he’ll love it.

Repeat it as often as you can to make sure he learns what you expect from him.

From this moment on, the most effective way is to act instead of reacting. If you’re expecting company, be prepared to ask him to sit before they enter the house.

Also, when you get home, try and get him to sit as soon as you enter and reward him if he does.

Step 3 – Stop your dog from jumping on people

This can be tricky, because we’re talking about people he doesn’t see every day, so it’s a bit more difficult to train.

First you’ll need a volunteer family member or friend. He’ll need to leave and return a few times, always passing close to your dog.

If your dog tries to jump on him, he should ignore him as mentioned in step one.

Also, as you’ve done in Step 1, he should reward him each time your dog doesn’t jump, even if he just hesitates, it still shows improvement and rewarding him will let him know that’s what’s expected of him.

Repeat as needed until your dog learns how to do it alone.

Then, you’ll take the exercise outside. Leading your dog by the lead, ask your volunteer to walk up to you from a corner or somewhere your dog won’t see him at a distance.

Watch how your dog behaves and reinforce the exercise if necessary, repeating it as much as necessary.

Once he gets what the volunteer expects of him, you’ll just need to try the same with as many different people on as many different locations as possible.

Not only will this be a lot of fun for your dog, it will also be a great socializing experience!

How Can You Teach Your Dog ANYTHING!

In order to train your dog, you need to understand how his mind works, otherwise you’ll fail.

Once you get the way he learns, you’ll be able to teach him just about anything.

Trainers charge a lot of money to tell you what to do, but don’t do the work for you. This means that you’ll spend $50/hour, having the results depend solely on you.

We wanted to be able to learn how to train our dogs to do what we wanted (and what we didn’t want them to do) without breaking the bank.

It seemed like an impossible mission at first, but a friend that had gone through the same problem had the answer all along.

The Solution Is Simple: Get An Online Trainer

We did it and we highly recommend it!

It helps tremendously that Adrienne is a CPDT-KA certified dog trainer with over a decade of experience.

It has allowed her to study dogs, really understand them and get to the bottom of their issues and behavior before creating the course.

It was like this online dog training course had been designed specifically with our dogs in mind.

We were afraid we wouldn’t be able to follow this course, but it’s actually divided into Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced levels.

This allowed us to start at the very beginning (a very good place to start!) and work our way up from there.

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See Also:

How to Make Your Dog Love Having His Nails Clipped

How to Stop Your Dog Peeing in the House

How to Teach A Dog to Be “Quiet” On Command