How do I get my puppy to to quit jumping on people?

Question

My dog is 1 yr old, we've had her for 3 months now. She is a german shepard mix, and listens...... relatively well. *it's getting better* We're just having a hard time breaking her of the habit of jumping on people as they come in the house. We've been trying redirection, where you tell her to lay down as you answer the door, and if she runs to the person you stand in front of that person coming in, and redirect the dog to go lay down, and keep redirecting her until she does, then she gets a treat. This whole process with her takes about --- ooo --- 10 minutes. Does anyone else have any other ideas or something that worked for them?

Answer 1

Try a GENTLE knee in her chest acompanied by a firm "No!" when she jumps up. I emphasize gentle because I do not believe that any physical punishment is useful in training puppies/dogs. This technique really is just intended to suprise and get her attention; it's the firm "No!" that actually works.

Answer 2

Well we had that problem with my parent's dog, the dog is about 3 years old so training him was a bit difficult. My mother LOVES watching the dog whisperer, so according to him when you come in the house, ignore you dog. When he starts to jump just walk past him, then once he settles down go over and pet him and greet him. We do then ever time we go visit my parents and it seemed to work, not like magic though it did take a few times and unfortunately he still does bark but the jumping has decreased. Good luck though!

Answer 3

It sounds like you are doing the right thing, but I know it's frustrating - been through it with my shepard mix.

I think you should work on the stay command once she lays down, and not just when people are coming in - do it a lot so she really gets it. And then when you give the release command give her lots of praise. That is what finally worked with mine.

Answer 4

Sometimes you have to set things up in order to train them quicker. Instead of waiting for people to come to the door, have a friend wait on the outside, then you have more opportunity to work on things.
Keep the leash on her, dropped to the floor so you can stand on it, call her up, she'll try and she will automatically correct herself, and will be unable to jump on you. Keep doing it til she decides that it's not worth her time. When people come to the door, stand on the leash. Tell her to sit. When she is calm, open the door. When she tries to rush the door, she won't be able to, the leash will stop her. Not you, but the leash, and she will be correcting herself.
She'll realize that it's not worth her time to rush the door and jump on people.

When people actually get into the house, tell them to ignore her. Don't allow people to give her attention until she is calm and quiet. If they do give her attention before this, they are encouraging the behaviour and she isn't ever going to quit.

Answer 5

You are doing all the right things....but you could make her sit at the door and stay sitting until the person coming in is settled and then puts their hand out to say hello. You need to praise her the whole time she is sitting & if she breaks say a sharp no and command the sit again.

It's hard but you have to be consistant. Having treats handy somewhere near the door that you could slip to her as she is obey will also be a help.

Answer 6

The best way to get a dog to stop jumping is to ignore him. The animal does it for attention, they don't care if its good or bad attention. Do not acknowledge him, don't even look at him until he calms down, then praise, praise, praise. Then he will associate the calming down with attention and not the jumping. Good luck.

Answer 7

What worked for me with our Border Collie was to ignore the bad behavior. A dog will jump up to greet and get attention. Following our trainers suggestion, we turned our back on our puppy every single time she jumped up and we also stated "off" in a deep, stern tone. When she returned to all 4's, we then immediately turned around to praise her for this. If she jumped up again, repeat the process. Soon she learned that jumping up was not getting her the attention she desired and that staying off would.

This takes time and persistence. You have to make sure that "every single person" who comes into contact with your dog follows up and addresses a jump exactly the same way.

We now instruct our pup to sit for the attention she desires. Her little fanny wiggles tremendously the whole time with excitement of greeting someone, but she manages to keep it on the ground.

I had a trainer in the past who suggested using the knee technique, but I found that very ineffective and actually made the dog in question more determined to jump up, rather than actually deter the behavior.

ADDED: IF you are going to do any kind of obedience training, don't use the word "down" to instruct the dog to get off when jumping up, as this is used in proper obedience to indicate to "lay down". If you use this one word to mean 2 different things, you can confuse your dog in training.

Answer 8

There is a sure-fire way to quickly get the message across to a medium to large sized dog to NOT JUMP UP on people!

When the dog starts to jump up on you, bring your knee up enough to where the dog's chest will hit it. Now, you don't have to be forceful, all you are doing is using your knee to block the dog. As you do this, in a firm voice say: "Down!"

Everyone the dog tries to jump up on has to do this to keep the consistency up, otherwise she will think it's okay to jump up on some people and not others.

I have lived with larger dogs most of my life, some really smart others kind of slow, ALL of them caught on after the second or third time, even ones with this as a bad habit.

Try it out. I will bet you it works well with your dog.

Answer 9

They have harnesses at petco and Petsmart that hook to their chest and legs so they can't jump. It doesn't hurt the puppy (I know I have 1!) andif you put it on when company comes over, they'll realize they can't jump so later they won't. It's a little uncomfortable for them, but it's a good teaching tool.

Answer 10

All you can do is keep doing what you have been and add pushing her down and saying "no" authoritatively. She will get the idea that it's bad and she will stop jumping. This usually works.

Answer 11

This sounds really harsh , but you have to instruct the people who are being jumped on to lift thier knee and solidly hit your dog in the chest. You wont have to do it for too long. It does work. Just dont say anything, dont be mean or aggressive. Quitley ingore the behavior (verbally) and hit him /her in the chest.