How to Get a Dog to Stop Jumping Up When You Walk Through the Door

In this Omaha dog training session we worked with Breck, a one-year-old Bernadoodle who needed help to stop jumping up and stop nipping.

After I arrived I sat down to chat with Breck’s guardians about their main dog behavior concerns. One of their concerns was that Breck would jump on one of her guardians and start to nip and bite at her clothes. One of the reasons that dogs like to do this is because it typically gets a strong reaction out of them, which is fun for most dogs, especially young dogs! When dogs do this they probably just think that they are playing. To help Breck stop jumping up and stop nipping we needed to train her on how to relax when she saw her guardians. To do this we used a Clicker based training method, which you can watch below.

As you can see in the video, clicker training can be an effective method of training. What you want to remember when using this form of training is that each click receives one treat for the dog. You never want to replace treats with the clicker, otherwise the clicker loses all of its meaning to the dog and they won’t respond to it anymore. The other thing is to think of the “hot” and “cold” game. When the dog does something close to what you want, initially you click to reward the behavior. As the dog gets closer to what you are looking for you only click when they fully give you the right behavior and stop clicking for other behaviors.

By the end of the session Breck was learning how to relax when she saw her guardians walk through the door. As a Bernadoodle trainer I would suggest that her guardians continue to use the Petting with a Purpose technique that we went over during the session. We wrapped up this dog behavior session with Breck’s Roadmap to Success video, which you can watch below.