Easy Lesson on How to Teach a Dog to Respect Personal Space

In this Omaha dog training session, we teach 2 dogs to respect personal space instead of jumping on thier owners to attention.

Victoria, a 2-year-old Border Collie, and Ferris, a 13-year-old Black Lab have learned that barking, pawing, nudging or jumping up on their humans is an easy way to get attention.

I saw how little these dogs respect personal space as soon as I arrived for the session. They immediately started jumping up on me, biting at my treat pouch and barking at me for attention. We call the last one demand barking and it can become a real problem if not corrected.

How to Teach a Dog to Respect Personal Space and Respect Boundaries

It only took me a few minutes to see why the dogs acted this way. Each time either dog wanted attention, it just walked over to their guardian to demand a tribute. If she didn’t start petting them right away, they would bark, climb up on the chair next to her to paw or nudge or jump up on her until she complied.

I explained to their guardian that anything your dog is doing when you give it attention is what you are rewarding and encouraging. This applies to both desired and undesired behaviors. Many people only think that giving pets or treats reward dogs, but your verbal attention is rewarding as well. So yelling “no!” (We don’t condone yelling at dogs) is similar to giving your dog a treat.

But in this case, the dogs got to see their unwanted behavior get rewarded with attention over and over. This literally trained the dogs to jump up, paw or nudge for attention instead of learning to respect personal space and offer polite behvaviors for attention instead.

Many people accidentally train their dog to jump up, bark or paw for attention by chastizing their dog verbally. This is probably one of the most common mistakes dog owners make.

This applies if your goal is to teach your dog to respect personal space, teach dog boundaries or stop demand barking.

One of the easiest ways to stop these behaviors is something I call celebrating. Its so easy, many of my cleints disregard it as it just seems too good to be true. But sometimes the best things are the easiest. Ive been showing people how to celebrate desired behaviors for years and it works wonders.

If you want to learn this simple trick to teach dogs to offer desired behaviors for attention and stop demand barking and failing to respect personal space, you should watch the short positive dog training video below.

It will take the dog’s guardian some time to get into the habit of celebrating their desired behaviors, but once she does, just about every time she pets her dogs, she will be teaching them that sitting, coming, laying down or other desired behaviors are the way to get her attention. It truly becomes the gift that keeps on giving.

Now it will greatly help matters if the guardian consistently uses a marker word with good timing. Marking good behavior is how we put it into context for dogs. My preferred marker is yes, but any short word will do.

Another Trick to Treain Dogs to Respect Personal Space

I also went over a few other tricks to stop the other unwanted behaviors.

Instead of saying “no!” or turning when the dogs jump up, I showed the guardian how to use a hand targeting exercise to motivate the dog to want to get down.  Many people think turning away or pushing a dog off will stop dog jumping, but those actions give the dog attention too.

Redirecting a dog to touch its nose to your hand that is away from your body causes the dog to need to get down to accomplish the exercise and get their reward.

Another thing you can to to stoip dog jumping is to do nothing. Since all attention is rewarding, simply freezing with your arms across your chest gives the dog no attention. This becomes an unsuccessful technique for the dog which removes the motivation to repeat it.

But there is a second step to the process. When the dog gets down, dont reward the departure. This is another common mistake people make. But that creates what we call chained behaviors; “first I jump up on you, then get when I get down and I get a reward.”

Instead, after freezing until the dog gets down, give your dog another cue like to sit, lay down, etc. Only say the cue once. If the dog complies, say yourn marker word then pet your dog under their chin. This way you aren’t giving attention for the jump and getting down. You are saying jumping up on my makes me stationary and boring. But sitting or laying down is a rewardable action.

The key is to have a break between the jumping and giving your dog the cue to sit or lay down. This way, the dog isnt deciding the next action, you are. This breaks the chain of behaviors. It also reinforces the celebrating. One thing reinforces the other!

Be Mindful When You Teach Dog Boundaries

Petting dogs is wonderful, but whatever your dog is doing or just finished doing is what your dog thinks they are being petted for.  This means that the guardian will need to refrain from petting the dogs when they get too close without an invitation. Same thing if they paw at her or bark from excitement.

Dog training is a numbers game. Throughout the session I watched as the guardian petted her dogs after they pawed, nudged or barked at her. Each time this happened, it was a micro dog training exercise of exactly what she didn’t want to happen. Celebrating will go a long ways toward fixing these dog behavior problems, but not petting when they offer unwanted behaviors needs to be a priority too.

Over time, the dogs will drop the unwanted behaviors because they no longer work. And at the same time they will become conditioned to offer sits, downs, eye contact, etc to get their human’s attention. A wonderfully easy way to stop demand barking, nudging or jumping behaviors.

Adding Structure to Help Teach Dog Boundaries

It is important to have a clear structure when interacting with dogs. Dogs judge our leadership based on how we behave around them. Adding in some rules and enforcing them consistently can also help flip the leader follower dynamic. Dogs need to fully understand this new way of thinking in order to stop pawing at people for attention.

I recomended the guardian introduce a few new rule such as sitting before they are let out the door, invited on the couch, leash gets attached or get permission to eat their food. These are small changes, but if repeated on ther regular will help the dogs see thier human as more of a leader instead of an on demand petting machine.

We made a video to help Ferris and Victoria’s guardian remember the dog training tips I shared during our session, including teaching a dog personal space. You can watch it below for a roadmap to success in training your dog at home.