Probably the most annoying behaviors that dogs have is jumping up. It's not only annoying, but it can be dangerous too, particularly if your pet jumps with an elderly person or perhaps a child and knocks them down. To prevent any injury, hard feelings or perhaps a law suit it’s smart to train your pet not to jump up.
When a dog jumps on people it is almost always meant as a friendly greeting. He wants to get nearer to your face and say “Hi”. Unfortunately we quite often encourage this behavior. After all, who isn’t pleased to see their pet after a long work day and when he jumps up on you within an overjoyed greeting, you always respond by petting and rewarding him!
The first thing you must do is stop encouraging him! You need to be a little tough on this one as your first inclination is to greet your dog in kind, but you'll have to do what is the best for both you and your dog and hold off the greeting until after your dog’s 4 feet are firmly planted on the ground.
As with all training, you have to get the dog to perform the desired behavior first before he can associate the command with what you want him to complete. In this instance the behavior would be to NOT jump up, but in order to get him to associate not jumping; he needs to jump up first.
One way to get your dog to “not jump” would be to bring your knee up to his chest when he begins to jump on you. I don’t mean to kick him – do this gently so that he's a little off balance causing him to return down to all fours. So the key is to cause the jumping behavior and then while the dog is jumping up, you have to stop the behavior while issuing the “Off” command. When the dog responds by going to all fours, you praise and reward him.
Now, your first thought might be to use the word “Down” for this but if you have already tried on the extender since the command for “lay down” then you will have to pick another word. In the following paragraphs, I suggest using the word “Off” but you can choose any word you want as long as it's short and doesn't seem like any of the other commands your dog already knows.
The knee technique may not work on most dogs, especially smaller ones so in this instance you might like to make use of a leash and collar. When the dog starts to jump, tug sideways on the collar and issue the “Off” command. This distracts your dog from jumping and he will probably remain standing at which you are able to reward him.
Like with any command, repetition is essential. The concept would be to observe your dog closely and see when he is about to jump up on someone then issue the command. It may be really useful to have another person assist you with this. Eventually you want to reach a location where your pet doesn’t actually have a chance to jump – you can tell when he is thinking about it and issue the command which will keep him, and also the person he would jump on, standing firmly on the floor.
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