Teaching a Super Cute Cavalier King Charles Spaniel Sitting is Better Than Jumping Up

By: David Codr

Published Date: October 20, 2017

Annabelle King Charles - Teaching a Super Cute Cavalier King Charles Spaniel Sitting is Better Than Jumping Up

In this Omaha dog training session worked with Annabelle, a 5 year-old Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, to get her to stop jumping and getting over excited when meeting new people.

Unlike most of the dogs we work with, Annabelle only had one real problem; jumping up on people. Her guardians were most concerned about her jumping up on guests when they come to visit. Annabelle’s jumping behavior had gotten so regular, her guardians had stopped having as many people come and visit.

It can be frustrating when a dog jumps on people, but as a dog behavior expert, I have found the reasons for this are almost always the same; the dog is excited and the dog behavior is rewarded unintentionally when humans pet a dog that jumps up.

To help Annabelle’ lean not to jump up on people, I walked her guardians through a technique I developed a few years ago. I like to call this Petting with a purpose.

Its going to be a challenge for Annabelle’s guardians to stop petting her when she jumps up because she is so darned cute. But if they remind each other with a timely “paycheck” command, it shouldn’t take long for Annabelle to learn the new way to ask for attention is to sit in front of a human instead of jumping up on people.

We walked through a simple recall exercise near the end of the session where I showed the guardians how to use a hand motion to put Annabelle into a sit over and over. If they can have a guest come visit and practice this each time, it should accelerate the dog’s learning process.

By the end of the session, we had gotten Annabelle to stop jumping up and was starting to sit to ask for attention. With some consistent practice for the next week or two, Annabelle’s jumping behavior should stop for good.

We wrapped up the session by shooting a roadmap to success video outlining some of the other positive dog training tricks we covered in this session.

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This post was written by: David Codr