3 Simple Ways to Stop Your Dog from Jumping

Hi. My name is Jess Rollins. I'm the founder and previous owner of PetExpertise.com, and I'm also a professional dog trainer, reward based, and have been for the last ten years.

And I'm excited today to talk to you about jumping up. And I'm excited because it's one of my favorite behaviors to work with, and that's because a jumping up dog is generally a happy and friendly dog.

So that's a great place to start from, and I like working with it because jumping up is so clear what our motivation is. The dog wants attention. The dog wants to say hi, wants to see you up close.

And so because we know what the dog wants, it's really easy to work with, so we can use positive techniques, and that's really the best way to go here, because we want the dog to stay happy and loving and enjoying people.

So we don't want to use anything like yelling or kneeing or stepping on their toes, any of these things we might have heard in other places. So what I do is I teach them to sit to be greeted. I teach them to sit to be greeted. And then if you jump, you lose attention. That is the crux of it.

So first we teach sit when I have a toy over your head, sit when I have a treat, sit when I'm dancing around. And then if we get a jump up, we leave. You can either go over a gate if the dog is tied back, you go out of reach.

You can go out of a doorway. But whenever you get a jump, you need to remove attention, because every time you push the dog off or say something, say down, you're rewarding the jumping up with attention.

So remove attention, reward sitting with attention, remove attention for jumping, reward sitting with attention. That's your mantra. And so let me show you a little video here. It's not exactly perfect, but nothing ever is. This is a rescue dog named Abigail, and I just met Abigail, but she has a strong sit, but she can jump up sometimes.

So we put the tether, we tied her back so that she's prevented from jumping on me. And then I am approaching, and I'm looking for a sit to reward. I have treats with me. Whoops. So when she did that, I said and I left. And I know that she wants to greet me, so that should be powerful.

And now I'm rewarding her for standing instead of sitting, but that's okay for her level. And now I'm adding distractions, right?

So this is something you can do with your dog. It's also pretty fun, and if you get a jump at any time, you'd say and leave. Okay, so let's pause that. Let's talk about a couple of different scenarios. How about you coming into your house?

So with you coming into your house, what I find is really effective is you open the door just a crack. If your dog's all crazy, you close the door. You just keep repeating that. When you get a moment of a bit more calm, toss a treat. Keep working on that, your dog will start calming faster. Toss the treat for sitting, toss the treat for calm, open the door a little more.

So you're going to keep practicing. Your dog gets excited, you close the door, right? Your dog stays calm, you keep opening it. So let's say now you can step in and you get a jump. So then you say ah, and you leave. You can cue the sit at this point. If your dog knows sit might help it go a little faster. But if you keep repeating anytime you jump,

I leave, your dog will get it very quickly. And then on walks, let's say your dog is wanting to greet somebody on a walk, you can tell the person, hey, you can only greet my dog if he's sitting to the sit. Have the person come forward.

If your dog jumps up, have them move or you move. And so I hope this is really helpful for you and you can use this with your dog and enjoy training your dog. Again, my name is Jess Rollins and I appreciate you watching and I hope you have a great day. Bye.