Stop Dog Jumping
Learn these tips and you can easily stop dog jumping. Does your puppy or dog jump up on you? Many dogs will greet their returning human family members with an excited greeting-including jumping up on them. They can quite quickly soil your clothes and scratch your skin, upset a guest and even scare a little kid. There are many good reasons you will want to stop dog jumping. Anyone who has had muddy dog prints on their formerly clean clothes knows at least one.
One reason he may be jumping up is because he wants to get close to your face. In nature this is how dogs greet each other, right? They go up and give each other a good sniffing around the face-before they go on to check out the less savory areas. In any case, it is best to train your dog not to jump. Besides the problem of muddy paw prints on your clothes, the dog’s claws may also be tearing skin, or he may be offending your guests and scaring children with his jumping behavior. Dog jumping problems are often the result of the owner not recognizing jumping as a problem. The owner may just accept the dog jumping up on them, and return the dog’s greeting with a cheery voice and a lot of affection. This gives your dog positive reinforcement, and encourages the dog to continue it’s jumping ways. Although it is nice to see your dog is glad to see you upon returning home, letting your dog jump up on you causes too many problems and should not be encouraged. You definitely will want to know how to stop dog jumping, because even if you may not mind it yourself, you can be sure that others won’t always feel the same way.
Usually the jumping problem starts when your pet is just a puppy. Being so little, the puppy will probably jump up at your knees to get closer to your face. This is natural, because dog’s greet each other by getting face to face. This is a good age to begin training to stop dog jumping. Naturally, you want to give your little buddy lots of love and affection , and clearly your puppy or dog is jumping up on you with affection in mind. However, rewarding this behavior with petting is just positively reinforcing the dog jumping –which will later become a problem, especially if your pup is going to be a big dog later on. If you are aware of this, train your dog to stop jumping at a very early age, by not rewarding him with lots of praise and affection when he jumps on you. Click here to learn more about early puppy training using positive reinforcement techniques. Instead, ignore the jumping, and only pet and praise him once he stops his jumping. It is very logical that the puppy will choose affection and praise over being ignored. By praising only the good behavior, and not acknowledging the wrong behavior, your pet will naturally learn to do the right thing. He wants your affection and rewards, and this is how he will learn how to get it, and conversely, how not to. To really stop dog jumping properly you must remain consistent. You can’t correct this behavior on some occasions, but then let him jump on other occasions. Everyone in the family must also be consistent when training your dog to stop jumping, or your poor dog will be confused, and it will be very difficult to teach him what you want him to do.
Once your dog stops jumping, your friends, family and you will be greeted by a more relaxed dog, and you won’t have dirty or torn skin and clothing. Neither will children or visitors be subjected to a dog jumping on them. Everyone will appreciate that.The good news is that the training to stop dog jumping behavior is easy to do. Here are a couple of tips that you can try.
- If your dog likes to jump up on you as his way of greeting you after some time away from home, you should immediately turn your back and face away from your dog-purposely ignoring his greeting behavior. A good technique to stop dog jumping is to bare your teeth in a silent snarl position. Dogs will recognize this as the dominant behavior of an Alpha dog (you), and will understand it as a warning. Wait for him to calm down, and only then should you praise him and give him a loving greeting. If he persists in jumping despite this technique, you may want to spray him using a water bottle. This should startle him and get him to stop jumping. In this case, keep the water bottle close by, so you can use it at the appropriate moment. Combine that with the ignoring technique, and your dog will soon get the idea you aren’t happy with the dog jumping scenario. Another idea to stop dog jumping up is to put some pebbles inside a can and shake that. Apparently dogs are sometimes wary of this sound, and will stop what they are doing-in this case the dog should stop jumping. Since he wants to please you and see you happy, he’ll soon stop the behavior that’s not winning him any praise or affection.
- Stop dog jumping early on by teaching your puppy or dog the “Off” command. If you start teaching your puppy this command while he is still quite young, he will already be trained not to jump when he gets bigger, thus solving the problem of how to stop dog jumping before it gets to be more of an issue. Using the Off command followed by the Sit command will serve to stop a dog from jumping on you, your family and your guests. If the dog is in the sit position when you reach over to pet him hello, he automatically is refraining from jumping. A well trained dog must learn the Off command for these types of situations.
Hopefully, your dog will be responsive to your attempts to stop the dog jumping behavior. If you’d like to know more about this type of dog training, or about how to solve any other of the many possible problems of raising a dog, I’d highly recommend checking out a great dog training book or dog training video program, to make sure you have a proven step by step formula to follow. That is the surest way to get consistent quick and effective results with your dog training efforts. Please click here to read my full review of Secrets to Dog Training, the best of the on-line dog training programs.
Click here to check out Secrets to Dog Training.