jumping

[Sine]

Joey is 21 weeks old and has a major jumping problem. He jumps on everyone! For instance, we went to Petsmart today and he wanted to visit with everyone by jumping. He gets so excited that a treat to get him sitting won't phase him. If I can get him to sit, it will be for a brief moment and then once the person starts petting him, he goes nuts again. I know about the whole turning around, ignoring thing, but what do you do when random people reach down to pet? Any thoughts?

[Adina P]

I think the answer will come with continued training. Continue practice sitting still for petting with people that you have "trained" in advance so they respond in a way that's conducive to your puppy learning. If it were me, I would not take him to PetSmart until he reached a certain level of good behavior and obedience(unless you're going there for a training class)---the level of distraction there is just huge. very hard for a puppy who is just learning.

So practice his sits and stays lots. Practice with people at a distance. Practice with people coming closer and not touching him. Practice with people coming close and looking at him but not touching him. As he gets very very very good at those items-- then you can start moving on to getting the people to stand closer to him and eventually touching him and eventually petting him and talking to him. But your training will have to go slow so that you don't go farther ahead than he is ready. Especially if you use positive only training. It is only my opinion but my opinion is that reward only training goes slower because the dog essentially is not allowed to mess up... if you go too fast the dog will mess up. That's one of the reasons I prefer training with corrections. I think they learn faster. But that's just me and my opinion and you have to do what you're comfortable with---either way it's still needs to happen step by step increasing the difficulty and distraction as your dog gains skill.

[Denise, Winnie, and AngelAbby]

Abby is a jumper too - and I was wondering if there is a belly strap thing that stops them from jumping. Abby is starting to stick her paws up on the table too lately and snitching stuff off the table. Not food - I keep food off the table so she isn't tempted...but anything else that's up there. I think she is a kleptomaniac myself! We have a friend that does the knee thing with her when she jumps on him and he has caught her good a few times, so now she doesn't jump up on HIM at all - but she does with the rest of us. She just LOVES people so much... and I guess I would rather have that than one who is afraid of strangers - those dogs you can't totally trust. But with her size, she could do damage, and those claws don't feel so nice either!

[Adina P]

the knee thing really works great--the key is not to make it personal or angry but simply a physical fact of life. Dog jumps-- dog will hit a knee... nobody's angry, nobody's trying to injure the dog--it's just the law of physics to the dog's mind.

If you have a leash on Abby, just step on the leash so that there is only enough length in the leash for her to stand but not to jump.

they do have this sort of harness contraption you can buy that keep the dog from jumping, but I've never seen it in action.

[Sine]

Thanks for all the replies! I so want Joey to be socialized so we take him everywhere we can but maybe PetSmart is too advanced at this point. And, our daily walks are so fun now that he's doing so well with walking on a loose leash but it's really hard when there is a runner coming our way. Sheez. It's nice to know other people are going through the same thing. I'ts kinda of disappointing because now that Joey is getting bigger, the jumping that all my friends thought was so cute when he was small (despite trying very desperately to enforce what we called the 5 minute rule where you ignore until calm when first seeing him) now get annoyed by it which is so unfair to see. By the way, what is the knee thing?

[Denise, Winnie, and AngelAbby]

When your pup goes to jump up on you, put your knee out and kinda ram the dog in the chest with it. Don't do it to hurt the dog, but if the dog hits the floor a few times, he will get the picture. It's like protecting yourself with your knee instead of your hand but do it with a little more force. It actually works pretty well if you catch the dog right. You don't want to knock the dog across the room tho, just knock it off it's feet. Abby doesn't jump near as much as she used to, but I would like to stop it completely. I just read an article last night that said that if you cross your arms in front of you, and don't look at the dog, the dog won't attempt to jump either. I'm going to give that one a try also.
The strap thing interests me because I want to keep Abby off the tables and counters - don't want a surfer. She is a tall one already at 4 months (4 months today)
I'm going to do more research on the harness contraption... I'll keep you posted.

[Sine]

ok, that explains it. thing is, joey doesn't really jump on my husband and m because everytime we come home, we completely ignore joey for a little bit and he got that since he was tiny. it's a problem with other people who i wouldn't trust doing the knee thing... hmmm.... at any rate, we worked on sit/stay last night and he let us completely walk around him without moving and we could leave the room out of hiis vision for a sec and there he would be, waiting. watch - he will totally embarass me when i try to show this off at his sat class - what, with all the distraction and all.... haha....!