How to Deal with a Jumping Dog – Part 4
Posted by Jeanne on August 3, 2009
How to Stop your Dog from Jumping
Most trainers agree that the most effective way for you to weed out unwanted behaviors (like jumping) in your dog is also the easiest: all you have to do is simply ignore him whenever he jumps up. The idea is to give him the cold shoulder: withdraw all attention, even negative attention (so no yelling, shoving, or corrections).
Here’s how to implement this training technique: whenever your dog jumps up on you, turn your back straight away. Since dogs understand body language a lot more clearly than they do the spoken word, you’re going to be using your posture to convey the message that such behavior isn’t acceptable here: fold your arms, turn your back, turn your face away from him and avert your eyes.
This is where a lot of people make a mistake: they confuse ignoring the behavior with ignoring the dog. You’re not ignoring the behavior – i.e., you’re not carrying on with whatever you were doing as if the jumping wasn’t happening; you’re ignoring your dog. You’re still going to react; but your reaction is for you to actively ignore him.
The cold shoulder is a really effective way of communicating your displeasure to a dog – he’ll catch on very quickly. Without the encouragement of your attention and your reactions to his behavior, he’ll calm down very quickly indeed.
When to praise
When all four paws are on the ground, then – and only then – you can praise the heck out of him!
Don’t be confused by the proximity of the positive reinforcement to the negative – dogs have a very short “training memory,” and are only capable of associating a reaction from you with whatever behavior it is they’re exhibiting at the time of that reaction.
So, it’s perfectly OK for you to react with wild enthusiasm the very second that his paws touch the ground, even if you were cold-shouldering him the split-second before.
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