Bella the jumping dog

[Stella Burkat]

We have a nine months old labradoodle. She has been with us for 8 weeks and is an absolute joy. Bella loves people and dogs. The problem is that she shows it by getting extremely excited and jumping on them. Bella jumps on people and when she is around dogs, she is also extremely hyper and is jumping on them uncontrollably. Any advice on how to train her to be calmer around people and to interact with dogs in a more dignified manner is appreciated!

[Kat and Winston]

We got our goldendoodle at 8 weeks. He's 15 months now. He is getting much better about jumping on people, but it's taken this long to get there.

What has worked best for us is having a lead on him at all times so when we would have somebody come to the door or meet and greet on a walk we could step on his lead as close to the collar as we could that would prohibit him from jumping too much.

He'd still try of course, but every time he would try to jump up we would say "off" pull him down and then we'd really praise him with "good off" and sometimes a treat. He's so much better now but believe it or not we've only now started allowing him to be in the house without his lead dragging behind him. Part of this is because we live in a beach house where are main living area is actually on the second floor. When he'd hear someone come home and inside downstairs he'd try to take off to go see them. At other times  he'd just get bored and attempt to take off downstairs. We have kids and I just didn't like the idea of a gate at the top of stairs for safety reasons of them trying to get over it or the dog knocking them down as they tried to get through it, so we didn't want to go that route, but having a lead meant it was easy to step on it to stop him before he hit those stairs.

As for other dogs we did a puppy class, but also we live in a community with a lot of dogs. Thankfully everybody actually uses leads. What we found as the best course of action was allowing him to meet lots and lots of dogs. Some would be more receptive of his playful puppy nature but those who weren't, would let him know and they would correct him themselves. But again if the dog is much smaller then we'd just step on his lead to keep him from jumping. 

Now, the only dog he jumps on is one who is just like him and they get so excited when they see each other. When we meet up with them they jump on each other and rough house for a minute or two and then we continue off in our own direction on our walk. It's so funny because when this other dog sees us coming, she stops and sits and won't budge for her owner until we meet up with them for their two minutes of play.

Hopefully others will have other ideas that may work better for you, but for us, the lead, lots of praise and time has been our best friend's best friends:-)

[Barbara, Zoey and Zeke]

The leash idea by Kat is also what helped Zoey and me.  She was way to quick for me to catch without it!!  lol   The other thing that has really made a difference is obedience classes.  We had to do the exercises over and over and OVER again!  She had to learn to sit before she was able to be approached.  People are very good about helping this along.  I took her to lots of places where she would run into people.  The dog park helped with playing with dogs.  You have no idea how often I have repeated the word "OFF", but it is definitely getting better!