Quick Training Steps to Stop Your Dog from Jumping on People

Jumping dogs are one of the most common struggles I see clients come to me for as a professional trainer.

No one likes their dog jumping up on strangers, getting mud on them, or even scratching their clothes or tearing them. And worse… if the stranger is afraid of dogs! 

A super easy way to combat this is to just avoid people, but that’s not very realistic for most homes - or wanted!

Before we can stop the behavior, we need to know why it's happening. So let’s break down this behavior into its ABCs…

A - Antecedents

These are the things/places/events that happen before that trigger or cue the behavior and make it more likely to happen.

For this situation, the As are likely one or several of these:

• Approaching a person on leash
• Person entering the home
• Person talking to the dog
• Person crouching down to the dog
• Person waving at the handler
• Doorbell or knock
• Handler talking to person
• Dog pulling towards person
• Dog jumping, whining, barking at the end of the leash or behind a gate
• On a walk in the park
• Anything else you can think of that happens directly before the behavior

B - Behavior

In this case, the behavior is jumping on people! 

This could also be barking, whining, whimpering, climbing on the person, and any number of other behaviors that you might see.

C - Consequence

When your dog has done this in the past, what has happened?

Have you shouted at them? Has the person bent down to pet them? Has the person left the house? What happens after?

Now that we have the ABCs we can work to change it. 

In order to change the B, we have to focus on the A and the C.

Let’s start with the As. 

How can we modify these things to make the B less likely to be the thing we don’t want (jumping)?

Let’s take this possible A for example: Dog jumping, whining, barking at the end of the leash or behind a gate towards the person.

How can we avoid this behavior?

The answer - pattern games! 

I have a whole blog post about pattern games, what they are, how they work, and more that you can read here. 

But my favorite game for this issue is the 123 game to walk up to the person.

If we can get the initial approach to the person calm, controlled, and in a pattern, we can usually catch the behavior before it starts! 

Here’s a bit about the 123 game:

Now let’s cover the Cs. 

When your dog jumps up on someone, what happens? If your dog has continued the behavior this long, it is likely that whatever happens is either neutral or rewarding. For example, if your dog is jumping and whining, and then the person bends down to pet them, that is REINFORCING the jumping behavior.

You might think the answer to this is to then not pet the dog at all.

While that is an option, I have found another option to be even better!

I routinely teach clients to use games like pattern games to pick a different behavior to reinforce instead.

For example, if we go with the pulling on leash to say hi example, our consequence might’ve been pets after the dog begins jumping.

NOW we can use our games (like 123) to keep all four paws on the ground with treats. That way, when the person bends down to pet our dog, they are rewarding the focus on the games and four paws on the floor vs the jumping. 

All of these techniques together look like:

• Handler sees a person approaching that they know will want to pet their dog.
• Handler begins 123 pattern game and rewards their dog for continued four paws on the ground.
• Handler reaches the person and rewards their dog for four paws on the ground.
• Handler tells the person that they can pet the dog (now that the dog is calm and has four paws on the ground).
• Sequence is complete! 

Hint: Sometimes following this pattern all the way through to pets every time is detrimental to the calmness. I like to go with the 1 out of 5 rule, if my dog likes pets. We pass by at least 4 people with no pets and using our games, and then one person gets to pet. 

Will you try out this strategy? Let me know in the comments below! 

And if you’d like to work on this with professional support and feedback, you'd love my membership the Pack. It's a monthly online program to teach you how to train your dog to listen to every cue, every time, joyfully.