Need help with jumping

[Amy]

HLEP!!!!!

I was hoping some people may have some help for me.  My 14month old goldendoodle, Maggie, has been jumping like crazy, and we are having trouble stopping this behavior. 

We have tried to ignore her, and she will just start to bark uncontrollable. 

We turn our back and she will then start to bark and jump on your back.

 

This behavior has made it rather challenging for us to have anyone over.  She is a big girl and has almost knocked over both my sister and mother inlaw. 

We tell guest to ignore her and not to pat her when she does this along with telling them to turn there back, etc.

We have also tried putting her on a leash with guest, but she will bark, and bark, and will still try to jump.

 

Any other tips or advice.  It is embarrasing, and I would love to get this under control ASAP!!!

 

THANK YOU!!

 

AMY

[BG and Gavin]

My suggestion is for you and everyone in your household to fold your arms, turn away from the dog and look up at the sky.  Be very consistent.  Also ramp up training on basic obedience.  If you dog know sit, once you are looking at the sky, give her the sit command and once she is sitting turn your attention back to her.  If she jumps again, repeat.  This is a technique that even little children can use - tell them to fold their arms and look for rain.

Please, please, please do not do a commonly suggested tip, which is to knee them in the chest.  The chest and ribs are a very vulnerable spot and you would not want to break your dogs ribs doing this. 

[Karen, Jasper and Jackdoodle]

What kind of training have you done/are you doing with Maggie? Are you working on basic obedience training on a regular basis? A 14 month old adult dog should not be jumping on people and barking at them.

With dogs, there are really no quick fixes. When a dog has a solid "sit" "down" "stay", "off", etc., the kind of problem you are talking about is a non-issue. The dog doesn't jump up on people, period, and if they do, a fast "Maggie, off!" followed by a down-stay will solve the problem. 

Also, how much exercise does Maggie get? How much socialization is she getting? Do you have her out in public around people on a regular basis, or is the only time she sees people when you have guests over?

 

 

[Adina P]

What do you WANT her to do instead of jump? THAT is what you want to train her to do. With solid obedience training you can TELL her to 'sit' or 'down' and then to 'stay' (on leash or off leash later) and that is an instant 'fix' but training her to obey takes practice.

[Karen, Jasper and Jackdoodle]

I just realized that Maggie is a rescue and you adopted her at 9 months old. So my comment that a 14 mo old should not be jumping, barking, etc does not apply here, if the poor girl had no training before she was adopted. The rehoming experience would have also set her back in that area, too. I'd approach her training as if she were a puppy and start from scratch.

[Amy]

Thanks to all of you. 

To answer some of your ?

BruceGirl:  thanks and I completely agree with you on the kneeing.  I am a big believer in no force, and prefer positive methods of training only.

Karen:  I agree, at 14 months she should not be jumping.  I have been trainining her since the day I got her at 9 months.  She had ZERO manners when we got her.  She is great with sit, stay, and come.  We still struggle with off, down, leave it, and of course jumping.  I had some private training sessions and I train her just about ever day on my own.  I just picked up a few books at the library to help with training as well.  My trainer is MIA right now, and she was okay.  I know Maggie needs more.

I try to make it super fun, and Maggie really enjoys it.  We walk 3-4miles daily, and play fetch daily too in the yard.  She was in doggie day camp for 2 half days, but I just recently took her out of it.  I felt she was enjoying the socialization, but also there were a few issues at the place.  I am going to look into another, because I know she needs it and I want to keep her social and friendly with other dogs.

 

Adina:  thanks.  I will continue to practice, practice, practice.

 

Thanks again all.  I know consistancy and practice is key.  Really appreciate the input. 

 

AMY

[Adina P]

Amy, in this group there have been some very good past discussions on how to deal with greetings at the door, greeting strangers, and jumping up specifically.  They are very worth your time in reviewing so we don't just repeat the same thing here en masse.

However, regarding practice and consistency, the practice needs to be good and the consistency needs to be worth repeating.  Let me clarify.  I don't mean that you have to be this superb award winning trainer with amazing skills to be envied by all.  I just mean that if what you are doing, repeatedly and consistently isn't yielding some very obvious progress then perhaps what you're doing needs to be changed.  So if your techniques or overall training philosophy isn't working something needs to be change.  Now you've only had her for 5 months and at 14 months old a lot of dogs still have very little self-control.  So that will come with more practice.  But again if after doing a set routine of training for a few weeks you see the same behavior from her and not much honest-to-goodness progress, perhaps a different type of training is needed.  OR it might be as simple as you not doing it 'quite right'.  I'm an expert at not doing it 'quite right' and every time I'd send my trainer a video of me training my Boca or Rosco I'd get a number of mistakes pointed out to me. EVERY TIME.  So quite often it is *I* the trainer implementing a technique (that I THOUGHT I understood) totally wrong...or just wrong enough to make it useless to be consistent.  It helps to work with a trainer who has successfully turned jumpers into polite greeters and whose past clients can vouche for this.

Another thing about this practice.  Are you practicing all over?  Quite often people make training time happen only around the quiet house or their backyard.  When the weather allows, go to the park and do this.  Go downtown.  Go outside of Wal Mart, PetCo, PetSmart, you name it!  Anywhere dogs are permitted be.  Work outside the dog park, farmer's markets, outskirts of a school, bus stops...  Dogs don't generalize well so if she has only had a lot of time practicing 'Down Stay' in your living room when nobody but you is around...she will only be good in your living room when nobody but you is around.

Here's what I'd do:

1) Invite some friends over who don't mind you working your dog for the first 5 minutes of their visit.

2) Crate your dog prior to the visit.

3) Invite your friends in and have them sit on the sofa

4) Go to your dog's crate, leash her up, and heel her toward your friends.  Don't necessarily walk her ALL the way to your friends. Only as far as she can handle without going berserk.  Then walk her back.  Then walk her forward again.  Reward for good heeling (if she knows heel) throughout this practice.  Stop now and then and do a sit stay, a down stay.  Short stays.  Heel some more.  Only getting as close as she can handle. 

5)  Heel her back to her crate, give her warm but calm praise and a cookie and send her to her crate again.

6) Go enjoy your friends' company.

7) If your friends are up for it...do this again at the end of their stay or half way in their visit.

Always return your dog to her crate so she does NOT get to practice the bad behavior.

Next time heel her closer to those friends...have her sit and stay closer...always TELL her what to do and then tell her something else to do.  SHe's young and impulsive and isn't mature enough to make the 'right' decisions on her own so you need to always direct her with obedience commands.  With time she'll learn to make those good decisions on her own.  Once she can hold a sit stay while people pet her and down stay while people pet her...then you can release her to visit.  It doesn't have to take months to accomplish either...daily work in different environments and by Spring she can be ready!

[Nancy, Ned, Clancy, and Charlie]

Amy, as the owner of a rescue, I can tell you that Maggie is still settling in, and while you do need to keep working on training, and the jumping is not acceptable to you, she has come sooooo very far.  Just keep up the good work and it will come.  I know that when I had had Clancy for about 6 months, I was amazed at how well he was doing and at a year I was even more amazed.  He did not come to us with 'issues' but he did come without training.  It was hard to see the progress until you measured by milestones.  For me it was medication.  Clancy came to us with an ear infection and had to literally be tackled and held down for me to get the meds into his ear.  He had another  about 6 months later and my DH could hold him gently by the collar and help keep him still (but he no longer fought this).  After this he had a cut on his paw and sat still for me while I medicated it.  When he had his third ear infection after about a year, he came when called, sat for me while I put the meds into his ear.  This, to me was partly training, but more it was a settling in, and the development of trust.

[Melissa, Jack, & Moose]

I am going through the same exact thing with Jack! He knows better than to jump on me or Eric; however- when it comes to others it's a totally different story!!! Jack loves EVERYONE and when he goes up to them he jumps like crazy too- and most people's natural instincts are to pet him- mainly b/c they know he's a friendly, happy dog with no intended harm, and he's also still a puppy (his cuteness does NOT help). So it's really hard to remain consistent- especially b/c trying to tell everyone to ignore him and all that  just seems impossible (BTW-I refuse to do the knee thing also)!! I dread going anywhere where there is a lot of people- and he really does feel like he's entitled to attention from everyone (it's a rare occasion when he is ignored to tell you the truth). I'm so afraid he is going to traumatize someone for life by knocking them down and doing real damage one of these days!! And he is getting huge! It's also super embarrassing. I cringe at the fact that others potentially think I don't know how to take care of my dog!

So, I understand your frusteration!!!! I'm hoping it might be a phase- kind of like the biting/nipping thing. I really do believe he knows it's wrong though...and I also keep forgetting he's a puppy still (not an excuse! I know) but...I don't know. I do know consistency is definitely key though. Well, If you figure out a better way let me know! LOL.

 

Melissa

[Adina P]

I guess I'm super opinionated on this.  I happen to think that my guests have NO responsibility in training my dog.  It is not up to them to be boring and look at the sky and be 'trained' in how to NOT get jumped on.  Of course if they egg my dog on...so be it, they get what's coming to them.  But otherwise, I don't expect to be able to train every single person that walks into my house.  I think it is my responsibility to train my dog to obey me or not.  We all know how hard it is to train our OWN dogs...to expect guests (who may or may not be dog savvy) to do all these little things 'just so' is asking for something that won't help all that much in dog training anyway.  A trained dog should hold his/her down stay regardless of what the guest is doing (within reason).  Now if you invite dog loving friends over SPECIFICALLY to set up some situations for training, that's different.  Hopefully they can follow directions then ;-)

[Jane, Guinness and Murphy]

Adina's "method" is pretty much what we've used also.  I'd add a couple of things....

• If I can't take the time to work with my dogs while the company is here...they are gated upstairs.  It's kind of "all or nothing".  If the company is family or friends we know well they start off gated and then we introduce them in a controlled way.
• I never give them a chance to practice the excited or "out of control" behavior.  Even if guests have to wait a few minutes while we gate the dogs (assuming we aren't expecting them at that time), that's what we do.
• I introduce them to guests the same way Adina does....leashed with training collars on.
• I put them in a down/stay first (when I bring them out of the gated room) and let them calm down.  When they stop displaying excitement they are allowed to greet the guests.  As soon as they get worked up again...back into the down/stay.  Now I rarely have to bring them back to the gated room.  If they have relaxed in their down/stay they approach guests in a much more controlled manner.

Believe me there was a time when my two guys boarded the "crazy train" every single time we had company....and I was riding it with them.  Since we've introduced this discipline it's so much better.  Good luck.

[Amy]

WOW!!  Thank you all so very much for the tips and advice.  I have printed out all this valuable information. 

I will work on things for sure. 

THANK YOU!!!!

 

AMY

[Moe]

We practice two things that help with no jumping in general. The first one our trainer calls elevator - you put the dog in a sit then hold a treat over your head and lower it. If the dog stays seated they get the treat, if they jump up you move the treat higher. It only takes a few times before they realize that to get the treat they have to stay seated. Then we practice it in a down.

The second one is for people coming near the dog. You'll need a friend to help with this one. We put the dog on a leash, I step on the leash so I'm not tempted to pull back. Put the dog in a sit then have a person approach, if the dog stays seated the person gives the dog a treat. If they jump up the person moves away. You get the dog to sit and try again. It really helps the dog to figure out how to greet people. It has helped our puppy a lot.

I also open the door and just ring the bell all the time so she just gets used of the door being open and having no one there. It takes the excitement out of the bell which seems to prevent her from getting too excited.