Overexcitable Pup

[diane silver]

Hi all,
Emma is now just about 9 months old, and when visitors come into the house, it takes her about 10 minutes to calm down. Today I met my daughter and her mother-in-law for lunch and we all came in the house together, and Emma was jumping out of her skin greeting us. When my husband or I come home and she's home alone, she greets us, but not as excitedly. I've tried putting on a leash when I'm there and people come in, but does anyone have any other suggestions to get her to be calmer and less crazy? She also is still mouthy, especially when excited.

[Carla, Lucca and Izzy]

Our trainer suggested to ignore (turn your back) if they jump. Then tell her to sit (once). If she doesn't obey, turn and walk away then ask again. She needs to learn that jumping will not get ANY attention. I have been doing this with Lucca (5 mon old) and he is figuring it out after asking to sit twice. It's harder when you have guests but she (our trainer) did say that everyone including guests have to comply, otherwise they won't learn. We're working on mouthy too. I'll let you know if we make any advances on that. I did learn that I was low on the "pack" scale (because I'm a wimpy discipliner and I coddle him)!! and I am trying to raise myself up to be respected. it's consistency and is working slowly. I am really tired of the mouthing also. I have clothes with holes because he jumps and nips when excited. I have to calm him down by gently holding him down, sometimes by the collar until he physically relaxes. It is working and he is mouthing less. Hope this helps.

[Mommy2Max]

My puppy is like this too. He gets most excited with my husband and guests. He is 3 months so, I'm oing to start trying to break this habit now.

~Danielle

[Maryann,Roo and Tigger]

You know I have been a member of doodle kisses for 18 or so months - since my first dood, Roo, came home and this has got to be the most difficult thing that doods tend to do. By about six months old I had managed to teach Roo to get his Zogoflex bone, (his favorite toy, and indestructible)when he was excited. I played fetch for about 100 hours with this bone and "get bone" was the cue that I was ready to play bone. I used "get bone" when he got excited to distract him and now he just runs and gets his bone when anything exciting is happening. THIS AT LEAST OCCUPIED HIS MOUTH so we were down to the jumping and jumping and jumping! Now at 18 months he is still very excited, but mostly manages to stay down. This was a combination of no touch no talk no eye contact (ignore) and a leash pop and finally an e-collar. I went to a really good trainer to learn to use the e-collar properly as I had not used one before. Basically it is used to reinforce a known command. It is pretty useless for teaching a command. Now, with the collar on, Roo stays down and swarms around everyone's feet with a large orange bone in his mouth. It takes him about 5 minutes to calm down. It is pretty comical actually, but when I have certain guests coming Roo and Tigger have to go outside as not everyone sees the humor. The people who are not irritated (oooh-- dog spit) or afraid have been a great help to me teaching this. My mother in law who lives with us in the winter has been my biggest challenge as she is in and out of the house often and I am not always ready! Still I think it is she who has helped over the last hurdle and somehow I managed to convey to Roo in my voice (or body language or something) that he simply could not jump on her as she is 88 and a fall is the last thing we want.

Tigger, his 10 month old brother, has been much easier to teach to stay down and probably would not have been a problem at all if he had not had such a bad role model. Tigger is just much more mellow than Roo, who is very exitable. However, Roo is much more eager to please me than Tigger so it kind of evens out.

Good luck with this and don't expect instant results as it sounds as if you have an excitable puppy on your hands.