Dog Training Tip: How to Stop Dogs From Jumping at the Door

For this Santa Monica dog training session we worked with 1 year-old golden retriever Roman, going over how to stop dogs from jumping at the door.

Roman already had a marker word in place but we did spend a little time going over hand targeting and how to introduce cues. I covered a number of other fundamentals like the importance of celebrating desired behaviors, how to teach dog manners, dog consent and cut off signals as well as some creative exercise tips.

The two main things the guardian wanted to work on were Roman’s inconsistent leash reactivity and how to stop dogs from jumping at the door.

I decided to go over my preferred way of stopping dogs from jumping on people first. Ironaically, most people don’t realize that they contribute to their dog’s jumping problem. They do this by reacting when the dog jumps up on them. Some people say “no!” Others push the dog down, turn away, get upset, etc, but all of these techniques have the same problem; they give the dog attention.

This is a problem because for dogs, all attention is rewarding. So yelling no when your dog jumps up (We dont condone yelling at dogs) is really just conditioning them to jump up on you again and again.

A more effective technique to stop dogs from jumping at the door is to first teach them the behavior you want, then practice it in steps and stages.

How to Stop Dogs From Jumping at the Door

Many people who have a dog jumping problem have never taught their dog what they want to do when people come to the door. But dogs are not mind readers. And because of our height, they’re actually motivated to try to jump up if they want to lick our face which is something dogs to to be friendly with a visitor.

I decided to break down the secret to stopping dogs from jumping up on people to make it easy for the guardians to solve this behavior problem.

If want to learn an easy way of stopping dogs from jumping, you should definitely check out the free positive dog training video below

The great thing about this trick to stop dogs from jumping at the door is how easy it is. It was really easy in Roman’s case because his guardian had already done a good job of teaching his dog to stay.

But by breaking the lesson down into individual stages, we were able to easily communicate to Roman what we wanted him to do. It only took a couple of repetitions before the guardian was getting the same results. I recommended that he arranged to have his sister drop by the house a couple of times a week to practice exercise to stop dogs from jumping at the door.

We also went over the guest which hand game. This is another really easy thing you can do to stop dogs from jumping on people. And just like the exercise I detailed in the video above, breaking this down into steps made it easier.

After spending some time practicing teaching Roman to not jump up on guests, we headed out for a walk to a nearby park so that we could work on his inconsistent Leash reactivity.

The guardian had already practiced a little bit of the engaged disengage game so we just took advantage of the opportunity to practice around the nearby dogs.

I recommended that he start keeping a journal of the dogs that Roman does react to since it seems to be about one out of every 12. The guardian had been unable to identify the common factor in the dogs that Roman reacted to. While it is often a specific breed or color, sometimes it’s related to the dogs behavior

We spent several minutes going over dog body language. Often dogs communicate with each other along before the humans are aware that the conversation is going on. It will be important for Roman’s guardian to learn to read his signs and then increase the distance between him and any other dog before Roman feels the need to address the situation himself.

On the way back we practiced to find it away game as well as U-turns. Since dogs consider a front facing approach to be confrontational, teaching and training your dog to turn around and practicing when you don’t need it is a wise precaution.

By the end of the session Roman was winding down so I pulled out my camera and asked the guardian to record a roadmap to success summary video. I would like to end my in-home Santa Monica dog training sessions by filming this video that highlights all of the things we covered in the session.

I told Roman’s guardian to follow up with me if he has any questions, setbacks or progress reports. I’m looking forward to hearing that he has been successful in his quest to stop dogs from jumping at the door. Based on how dedicated he is to his dog and the work he’s already put in, I’m guessing it won’t be long before Roman learns to stop jumping up on guests.