We can't have guests over - please help!!!

[Emily Jones]

We love our Goldendoodle Sophie, 1.75 years old, but she cannot handle herself when we have houseguests over. Houseguests are a huge part of our life -- both overnight and daytime guests -- as we leave in a resort community and constantly entertain. When guests come over, our Goldendoodle jumps up, play bites, and will not leave the guests alone. In fact, she gets so excited when guests come through the door and give her attention, she sometimes even pees a little on the floor from excitement. Once the guests come inside and get through the original meet and greet, if they extend her any attention, Sophie starts over again with the jumping and bad behavior. She loves people but we have to lock her up when we have houseguests because she won't behave. We've done behavorial training and have tried a shock collar and nothing works...even contemplated writing to Caesar to see if he'll come work on our dog. It is embarassing for us and extremely awkward for our guests. We want Sophie to be out and about when guests come over, but it's not possible with the way she acts currently. Please help!

[Adina P]

I would like to hear MORE about your previous attempt at training with the shock collar and exactly what you did and how it worked while the collar was one. I'd also like to hear about the "behavioral training." What did it involve? How often did you practice? Did you practice with people?

In the meantime, the simple answer coined by a trainer acquaintance of mine is:

Train the dog, and don't let her do that! ;-)

What do I mean by that?

I mean: A) Work DAILY in obedience training. This means that you work on basic commands like "Sit" and "DOWN" and "STAY" and "HEEL" and "COME" -- perhaps Sophie already knows how to do those when there's nobody visiting...but if she can NOT do them on command when people visit...you're not done training. Most dogs can learn new words and how to do things when nothing much is going on. But the tough part is learning to do these reliably while there are distractions around. The only way she will learn to be obedient in face of distractions is to actually use distractions in training. This means you'll have to do your training everywhere: in the home, out of the home, downtown, in parks, ANYWHERE dogs are allowed is a place you should practice the basics. Because once your dog is TRAINED (not just when she's learned what a word means) you can tell her to "Sit stay" and guests can come in while she's sitting and staying politely. Training IS the answer...there's no other way to get her to do as you want her to do without training. There's no magic pill or 24 hour solution. But once she's TRAINED, you CAN give her some magic words (things to do) that she will obey and those things will keep her occupied (sit stay, down stay, go to your spot, etc).
My guess is that you started training...but never finished.

B) Don't let her do that! This means UNTIL she's trained...she cannot have the freedom to bounce around the house off leash while guests are over. This just allows her to practice the unwanted behavior. No use practicing what you don't want her to learn...so contain her in a crate, behind a baby gate, or keep her on leash and under control. The more she's allowed to act the way you do NOT want her to act...the better she'll get at acting that way.

Here's a link to some past discussions on this...with tips others have given before:

http://www.doodlekisses.com/forum/topics/jumping-on-people

http://www.doodlekisses.com/forum/topics/jumping-how-do-i-stop-the

http://www.doodlekisses.com/forum/topics/jumping-1

http://www.doodlekisses.com/forum/topics/2065244:Topic:91687

[Lynda Kamrath]

Sounds like Sophie suffers from overexuberance - quite common in doodles, and probably more difficult to control as they get older. Puppy exuberance is kind of cute, but needs to be controlled in all dogs. Our younger doodle was so excited whenever my mother came over (she is in her 90s) because he knew she always brought him treats. Our neighbor also excited him because she has a high voice that she always talked to our dogs with excitement. Since both our dogs are about 100 pounds, it is imperative that they do not jump on people. We started putting the dogs outside and ignored their barking and jumping until my mother was seated and they had calmed down. Then they were invited in to greet her. The neighbor also was instructed to ignore the dogs until they were calm and ready to greet her. When guests arrive at the front door, the dogs need to sit and stay until things are calm enough for them to be included in conversations, greetings, etc. If you are excited, they tend to get more excited, so calmly take them to the area where they can wait and ignore their behavior. If you learned about negative reinforcement in sociology classes, that is what you need to avoid. They may be used to getting attention that way and negative attention is better than no attention. Try to be calm in all your interactions with her, and she may calm down. The hard part is ignoring the behaviors you do not want to reinforce.

[Margaret Becker]

We can really relate to this. Snickers is almost 6 and we still limit guests because of his "enthusiasm" when people come into the house. When he was younger he actually surfed across the glass coffee table onto the couch in order to say hello to guests - cute to them, not so funny to us. He went through two obedience courses and did great both times - the trainer often used him to demonstrate exercises. Outside of the house he is very good, no problems at all. Where we went wrong was to avoid the issue by not doing training exercises at home. Here is what was recommended to us, and what we didn't follow through on (and should have done and should still do). Maybe it would work for you. Identify a "place" where you want Sophie to go when someone comes to the door. "Place" could be another room, an area rug, her crate, whatever you identify. Always refer to that as place. Then associate a treat with place. So it's Sophie, place. Lead her at first and then reward. And repeat, repeat, repeat. When she does it without the lead have someone come to the door, then send Sophie to place. If she needs to have the lead back on, that's ok, just keep going. Repeat the exercise with people as much as possible. If Sophie knows her other commands - sit, down, wait, stay... and you can incorporate place with another command that might help. So eventually it's Sophie, place, stay (or whatever is appropriate) until you release her. That will take a lot of hard work and commitment but that should put you in control of the situation and keep Sophie off your guests. What we have seen work with Snickers is that if he is ignored he will eventually settle down so that might be key to the issue too, asking people to just ignore Sophie no matter how cute she is. Don't give up!!!

[HANNAH 8/2/07 & HONEY 7/2/08]

Try keeping Sophie on a leash, when she goes to jump give her a correction....keep her on the leash until you know she 100% over it and listening.

[Liane Thakur]

We ask every single person who comes through our door to ignore Barney until we tell them to do otherwise. And we have asked friends to come over to help us work on his training...which has helped a LOT. They know ahead of time what to do and how to do it, and the more we do this, the better Barney is becoming. Best of luck.

[Nicky K]

You've got lots of good advice here so I won't add too much more, but just to let you know... some of the behaviour you are describing are some of the reasons our labradoodle was given up by the previous owner. At 10 months old we trained him not to jump on people or play-bite in less than 3 minutes (used to teach obedience classes).

jumping... I can see she's a big girl! when she jumps on you, knee her in the chest to knock her on her feet. This works well because the dog thinks she did it to herself... can't see your knee action below her chin. It took 3 times with our doodle.

play-biting. When she takes your hand in her mouth, instead of pulling it away, push it way into her mouth. This is unpleasant, not fun, and totally not what she wants, but not painful. Took 3-4 times with our doodle to learn it; then he got excited 2 days later and tried again, and it took 2 more times. No more problems.

Outstanding books to read are "the dog who loved too much" and "dogs for dummies", nicely written, lots of fun anecdotes about dogs, and good advice. Both books have good, easy to follow advice on overexuberance.

I'm a bit concerned that you tried a shock collar. This suggests that you aren't getting good training advice, because there is no reason a shock collar would be needed given the behaviour you're describing. I mention this just so that if a friend or trainer suggested it, then you shouldn't go to them for advice any more.

I agree that it's ok to lock her up every time friends come over until this is resolved. Ideally a crate, but it doesn't sound like she's crate trained. If so, I prefer a baby gate over a closed door, which is more isolating and possibly a bit scary for her.

[Adina P]

I would second the 'knee lift' -- the key, in my opinion, is to make it impersonal and not confrontational at all. So no need to say "NO" or look her in the eye or anything. Just make it reflexive...as if that's just what knees do. Make it quick, non-threatening, and then act as if nothing happened and be happy to see her once she's got all four paws on the floor.

It has to be like a law of nature sort of thing. Law of Nature from Dog's Perspective: When dogs try to jump up toward people...people have this weird reflex where their knee juts out suddenly--it's like these crazy humans have no control. So best if doggies avoid jumping toward people. Now, the only flaw is that sometimes if guests don't ALSO do this...it only works to prevent doggy from jumping on its owners, but they may not generalize to the rest of the population. Especially when guests are often too shy to correct your dog.
That's the case for our Thule. So we continue to work on improving her reliability with stays because I can't count on my friends/guests to 'do things right.'

[Sessa]

We use the "find your spot" technique---which means, go to your bed, lie down, and wait.
We have several beds throughout the house, but when training the front door, we use a bed that is still within sight of the "action."
We train it often too, regardless of guests coming over--my husband or I will go outside and ring the doorbell or knock on the door, which triggers the other inside the house to start our doodle on her greeting routine....she is NOT allowed to greet visitors on her own, let alone get up from her "spot" until we say so...if she does, right back to "find your spot." Staying in your spot gets BIG praise and BIG value treat....Once the guests are in and settled, we give the invitation to the doodle by saying "come say hello," which is a greeting for our guests that is under control. Once we have that, the initial excitement wears off rather quick and our doodle becomes calm again.

GOOD LUCK and keep working on it---you don't have to become anti-social with your friends, trust me! Plus, you'll feel SO PROUD to have your friends come over and see your well-trained and polite doodle! ALL THE BEST!