One of the most common challenges for dog owners is the jumping up on guests as they arrive or when greeting people on the street. The key to taking care of this behavior is consistency and planning. One of the best ways to begin this process is to give your dog an alternative behavior that will get the same results. This would then be reinforced using a combination of positive and negative reinforcement. The positive reinforcement would be used to teach your dog the alternative behavior for when guests arrive. The negative punishment would be that they do not get the attention that they are wanting by jumping up on someone. We would be basically taking that desired reinforcement, or attention away from them.
Jumping Up Reinforcement
What happens when they jump up is, they want attention and most often they get it in the form of a “correction” which could be done in many forms. This attention doesn’t only have to be in the form of hello’s and pets for the dog. The interaction with the dog to get him/her down whether it is good or bad, is also believe it or not …. attention. So, if instead of responding and reinforcing the dog, simply turn away or to the side, and the dog will not achieve that attention that they want.
If your dog has learned an alternative behavior, such as sit, they will get the desired attention and it will be positive. We can train this new behavior by asking the dog to sit upon arrival at the door, then giving him/her a high value or great treat once the dog offers the behavior, then the praise can begin. If you are consistent with this behavior change, you will ultimately have results. The key is the word consistent. So, every time you see someone on the street who wants to say hi to your dog, or your dog wants to say hi to them and you want to allow it, have the dog sit first, and then allow the dog to greet the person.
If you have a puppy, a dog that is super excited when guests come to the door, it’s a good idea to have the him settled away from the door. This could be in a “holding area” with a baby gate so that they don’t come rushing to the door upon arrival. This can also be very helpful if you have a small entry area, where chaos is predictable due to the tight quarters.
The Visiting Dog
Keeping your dog calm when a friend comes over with one of their dog friends is very difficult. I know this from experience. What we do is to have our dog busy when they arrive and have the guest and dog friend simply enter the house without knocking on the door or ringing a doorbell. This way our dog sees the dog when she is already in the house and does not have time to build up her arousal because the door was knocked on or she saw or heard them entering the yard. The greeting is a bit crazy but settles much quicker than if we allow her to see her friends coming. This would need to be modified to your specific situation as not all dogs are able to meet another dog the same way when indoors. Safety is the most important consideration, and you know your dog and his/her limitations. This is another topic.
As with all behavior modification, it is very important that if there is more than one person in the house that everyone follow the same procedure with your dog. This is important for all training activities. Every time that the dog jumps up on a person at the door, it strengthens the behavior by the reinforcement that they get from the person that they are jumping up on. The popular knee in the chest maneuver is one that appears to work quick and easy to keep the dog off the person however….. it is not a recommended method because number one it is aversive and number two the dog is not learning anything. By teaching a more desirable behavior, the dog or puppy can learn how to get a more positive response from the human that he/she is wanting so badly to greet.
