Teaching an Excited Bel Air Dog to Calm Down and Stop Jumping on People

For this Bel Air dog training session we taught 1 year-old Chihuahua / Poodle mix Dizzy (Pictured on the left with her roomie, a 4 year-old, Pit / Sharpe / Chow / Boxer mix named Goldie) to stop jumping up when excited, leave it, drop items and respect their guardians as authority figures using positive dog training methods.

I wanted to show the guardians an easy way to train dogs to calm down and stop jumping on guests so I had he guardian put Dizzy on the leash (he has the biggest jumping problem) and move Golda out back.

Stopping a dog from jumping on house guests isn’t hard with the right approach. In this case I created a scenario where the dog could figure out a different way to get attention from the guest. The benefit of this approach is the dog first learns to calm itself down. You can learn how to stop a dog from jumping on people when excited by watching the video below.

I love this approach as the dog learns by itself through trial and error; with an assist from the visiting human who needs to have excellent timing of turning away then reengaging when the dog calms down.

As a dog behavior expert I could immediately see that a big contributing factor to Dizzy’s behavior problems was his high energy personality. He was all over the place, aggressively shoving his snout into my bag, trying to steal treats, showing now respect for personal space and listening only when he felt like it.

I suggested the guardians start an exercise journal and detail each day’s activities and exercise by time, followed by an over all grade on each dog’s behavior for the day. The following day the guardians can add in additional fetches, another walk, game of fetch, etc.

Eventually the guardians will find the right amount of time and most productive times to engage in them. For now, the humans should interpret Dizzy stealing things, jumping up or other similar nuisance behaviors as his way of saying he needs a quick game of fetch, walk, etc.

Increasing the exercise will not solve his behavior problems, but it will make fixing them easier.

It will be important for the guardians to add some structure in the form of rules and enforce them consistently using the escalating consequences. It will be especially important for the first month following this session. If the guardians strictly enforce the rules with good timing (within 3 seconds) for a month, with dog and human will develop good new habits that should flip the leader follower dynamic.

I also did a fair amount of positive dog training in this session. The guardian mentioned how busy they were, but in reality, it shouldn’t take longer than 10-15 minutes of dog to practice these exercises. After a month, the dogs should know how to drop and leave it, target the guardian’s hand and focus.

Because of how little control Dizzy had, we weren’t able to solve all of his behavior problems so I recommended the guardian practice these exercises and steps for a month, then have me come out to build on their success and teach the dogs to stay out of the kitchen and stop trying to steal their guardian’s food.

To help the guardians remember all the dog behavior tips and secrets I shared in this in home dog training session, we shot a roadmap to success video that you can check out below.