Teaching a Little Dog to Stop Jumping Up on Guests Who Visit

For this Omaha dog training session we teach 3 year-old Cavashon Edgar to stop getting excited when meeting new people and stop jumping up on guests who visit his home.

Knowing that jumping on people was one of the things his guardians wanted to fix, I called ahead and asked them to place Edgar on the leash so I could show them my preferred way to stop dogs from jumping up on people.

The great thing about this strategy to stop dogs from jumping up on people is the dog learns the lesson on its own instead of a human teaching it. When Edgar gets excited or the dog jumps up on a guest, they immediately stop petting him. This is a form of operant conditioning and its the same approach the humans can use to stop reading excited behavior.

When Edgar comes over to his family members of a guest and is excited, they need to immediately stop interacting with him. If he jumps up, stopping petting then wait for him to get down on his own. Once he does, they can start petting him again, after saying the word “off.”

It takes a lot of repetitions and precise timing, but if the humans stop interacting with Edgar when he gets excited or tries to jump up, he will learn that behavior gets him the opposite result of what he wants. Combined with petting with a purpose and passive training, it shouldn’t take Edgar long to figure out that sitting or acting calmly is the best way to get attention from a human.

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