How to Help When a Dog Gets Excited at the Door

For this Marina del Rey dog training session we worked with Australian Mountaindoodle Dewey, sharing tips to help when a dog gets excited at the door.

Dewey has a few other dog behavior issues like being reactive to other dogs on walks or humping his favorite blanket.  But just like every other creature, you need to learn to walk before you can fly. In order to stop the door excitment, we first needed to start with some basics.

In Dewey‘s case, that meant teaching him to be calm when being leashed up. This is the first step to teach your dog to be calm for the leash when a dog gets excited at the door.

To achieve that goal, we went over a number of dog behavior and training fundamentals. I always like to start by making sure the human and dog are clearly communicating with each other. Miscommunication accounts were probably half of the dog behavior problems I am hired to fix as Marina del Rey’s dog behavior expert.

I explained the importance of using a marker word and showed the guardians how to teach Dewey to listen for it through a loading exercise. Afterwords, I walked his guardians through a hand targeting exercise to help them practice their timing. I recommended that they practice this exercise and any others three times a day in short one to two minute practice sessions.

Many people try to train their dog for too long in one sitting.  This often causes the dog to lose motivation and sometimes even become frustrated. Shorter, more frequent practice sessions are one of the dog training tips that successful professional dog trainers use to achieve results. I suggested she practice the exercises we went over for a minute in the AM, another 1 minute session mid day and then another minute in the evening.

To teach Dewey manners, I walked his guardians through the celebrate game. This is probably the easiest dog training tip that I have shared with thousands of clients. But don’t be fooled, this can be an extremely powerful exercise, but only if you get a new habit of doing it regularly. And its a sneaky good way to help when a dog gets excited at the door.

Next I gave them some tips they can use if Dewey starts interacting with them in an inappropriate or undesired way. Using the positive interrupter to stop the behavior, followed by hand targeting is a great way to stop unwanted dog behaviors without making dogs want to do them more.

Of course we went over dog consent and cut off signals. This is one of my favorite lessons to teach because most people don’t realize they frequently pet their dogs in a way that their dog does not like or interpret as trying to dominate them. I followed this up by discussing dog body language.

Dewey’s guardians had gotten pretty good at reading some of his indicators, but the more you understand about dog body language, the better equipped you are to intercede with good timing. This is a great way of stopping dog excitement.

This can also be helpful when you have a reactive dog. The instant you recognize your dog starts to feel uncomfortable, you have the opportunity to increase distance or solve the problem before your dog feels the need to do so on their own. Same rule applies if you have an exctied dog or one who is anxious or fearful.

It’s important to understand that most dogs that are reactive are having an emotional outburst and are not doing the behavior intentionally. Just like someone who is getting scared, there are multiple levels. If someone starts to become scared and then someone else makes the scary thing stop or go away, the person feels better. Same things for dogs who are fearful or insecure around other dogs.

Since there are a lot of dogs where Duncan lives, I did go over a few walking tips that will help them redirect his attention or more easily move him away from things he doesn’t like.

We also discussed the importance of getting Dewey enough sleep. Throughout the session he repeatedly mounted a blanket. While this is obviously more desirable than having a dog hump your guest’s leg, Dewey’s guardians would prefer he doesn’t do the wild thing at all.

Since this is a practiced behavior most likely due to him feeling insecure, tired or overwhelmed, the improvements will seem to come in small increments. There’s no direct exercise that stops a dog from humping. Instead it’s all about making the dog feel confident and secure. That’s why I cover so many fundamentals in my initial in home dog training session.

Clearing up communication, making sure the humans are listening to the dog, understand the things they do that may be contributing to the problem and helping the dogs see and identify them as leaders it can count on our foundational elements that help most dog behavior problems.

How to Help When a Dog Gets Excited at the Door

Another way to help a dog be less reactive on leash is to make sure that they are calm for the walk. This starts with the behavior and energy your dog has before you even leave your home. If your dog gets excited at the door, you need to start at the beginning of the process, when you leash up your dog.

Many people talk to their dogs excitedly when they are putting on the leash. And people usually do this near the exit to their home creating door excitment. Instead, I recommended the guardians practice leashing up Dewey without saying a word.

This is best accomplished by leashing up your dog when you don’t follow up by going for a walk. Getting up and walking over to the leash, but then stopping as soon as Dewey shows any excitement allows the humans to continue with their day without becoming frustrated. After all, they weren’t planning on taking him for a walk anyways.

This technique is called desensitization and it is a very effective dog behavior tech technique when your dog gets excited at the door.

But there are a number of other things you can do to stop dog excitement at the door. I wanted to make it easier for the guardians to remember them all so I pulled out my camera and asked them to film me as I demonstrated these tips.

If you have a overstimulated dog and need to learn how to help when your dog gets excited at the door, you should definitely watch the free positive dog training video below.

Stopping dog excitement is all about first teaching and rewarding them for the behavior you want. Like every other kind of positive dog training, if you mark and reward the things they do, they will be more likely to do them again.

But many dogs get over excited because the humans continue moving forward even when the dog communicates they are too excited to listen.  If your dog can’t listen to you inside your apartment, there is no way it’s gonna listen to you out in the world. Especially if you have a dog that is prone to emotional outburst like reacting to other dogs.

Training a dog to be calm requires the human to stop the process the instant the dog starts to show excitement. This makes it easier for the dog to calm down quicker which allows for more and better quality practice.

It’s rare that you end up with a calm dog. Although there are some dogs that are have lower energy that are easier to work with, the key is to practice success. By stopping the instant the dog starts to get excited, and marking a rewarding them when they don’t, the dog learns to be calm.

By the end of the session, Dewey was exhausted. He had moved from trying to hump the blanket to showing interest in my leg so I knew we needed to wrap things up.

We covered so much in this in-home Marina del Rey dog training session that I was worried his humans may not remember at all. I pulled out my camera and sat down on the floor so that I could summarize everything we covered.