Living with a “bouncey, trouncey, ouncey, pouncey” dog or puppy who actually thinks they’re part Tigger can be challenging. You avoid walking in busy areas, so you don’t come across other people and you stop inviting guests into your home.
You feel like you are constantly watching your dog and you’re always on alert in case your puppy lands on something inappropriate. It starts to feel like a full-time job managing your dog’s behaviour and can quickly become a military operation to simply go about your day-to-day life with your dog.
Whether your dog is jumping on you, your friends or your neighbours, bouncing at strangers on walks, guests in your home or the delivery man, or leaping on anything that moves – it means your life can begin to feel pretty restricted and let’s face it, it can be pretty embarrassing too.
Well, worry no more! We’ve got you covered in this super blog with all the strategies and solutions you could ever need to stop your dog jumping up!
Stop Your Dog Jumping Up with Calmness
Just like their humans, dogs have stress thresholds. We like to think of this as a bucket. Yep, your dog has a stress bucket.
Your dog will go through daily life carrying their stress bucket and each event and experience of the day - whether good or bad, exciting or scary - will feed into that bucket, filling it up to the point of overflow.
When a dog's stress bucket overflows, you get an outward display of behaviour. Some dogs will bark. Some dogs will lunge and react. For the dogs with springs in their paws, they are likely to choose jumping up!
So how can you tackle this and stop your dog jumping up?
Well, whether you have a puppy, a rescue dog or a long-time family companion, teaching them the concept of calmness is essential. Calmness is one of the most vital skills for any dog to understand as they navigate life, and we have the ultimate solution so you know How to Teach Your Dog to be CALM and SETTLED!
The Calmness Triad provides an excellent framework through which to teach your dog or puppy the value of being calm as you rotate through the three zones of calmness when they are not actively training, exercising, exploring or playing with you.
Active Rest
Life – and choice – is exhausting! Dogs need a time out where they don’t have to make any choices and their only option is to rest. For your dog, that might be in a dog-safe room, behind a baby gate or in a covered crate or puppy pen. They could even take a nap on a comfy bed anywhere in the home if they understand how to stay on a bed and chill out.
Passive Calming Activities
These are activities that you can employ your dog in that encourage calmness. Try scatter feeding some of your dog’s daily food in the garden or use snuffle toys and mats. You can also use filled Kongs, lick mats and long-lasting chews, puzzle feeders and scenting/sniffing out hidden food.
The Calmness Protocol (Rewarding Calmness)
This is time when you actively reward spontaneous moments of calmness, using your dog’s daily food allowance and putting all of that tasty value into those super choices. Look out for:
✓ Real calm with chin resting on the bed/floor or where your dog lies down
✓ Deep breathing and relaxing sighs
✓ Stillness
By incorporating the Calmness Triad into your dog’s daily life, you are taking those first all-important steps towards growing a calmer dog and a calmer dog is less likely to jump up!
You can learn more about calmness, your dog’s stress bucket and the Calmness Triad in our super cool Calm eBook.
Stop Your Dog Jumping Up with Gated Communities
What dogs rehearse day in and day out they will become. That means if your dog gets to practise jumping up, they’ll get really good at it and because it’s fun, they’ll likely find immense joy in it too.
So in order to solve your dog’s jumping up struggles you need to prevent that rehearsal! This is where management becomes your friend!
Using crates and gated communities is one super strategy that will allow you to prevent your dog from rehearsing or practising undesirable behaviours, such as jumping on people as they come into your home.
By using a combination of baby gates, barriers and closed doors around your home, you can limit your dog’s access to places like the front door, the kitchen or any of the common places where they might rehearse inappropriate behaviours like jumping up.
This means you can welcome guests without the embarrassment of trying to rein in your dog, you can receive deliveries without your dog jumping up on the postman and you can arrive home from work without being taken out by your dog as soon as you step inside.
TOP TIP: You might also choose to have your dog on lead when guests arrive, or pop them into a crate while you answer the door. Stopping rehearsal will help prevent jumping up and attention seeking behaviours and, alongside gated communities, this sets your dog up for success by preventing rehearsal while you work on growing their skills and training them to make great behaviour choices.
Stop Your Dog Jumping Up with Boundary Games
At absoluteDOGS we love Boundary Games! We love them because Boundary Games are the foundation of every dog’s training plan success.
Incorporating Boundary Games into your dog’s life from the start can prevent many behaviour struggles from occurring and introducing Boundary Games into your dog’s training can halt behaviour struggles in their tracks if they have already begun!
When your dog has the skills to hang out on a boundary and has value for staying there, nearly every decision will be appropriate. They’re not counter-surfing, they’re not jumping up at people and they’re not causing chaos in your home.
This makes your dog easy to live with and what’s more, the boundary becomes an anchor that helps your dog settle. Often, if a dog is loose, they will be making all sorts of inappropriate choices, and yet when they’re on a boundary, they’re much more likely to choose calmness.
Boundary Games can form a valuable part of your management strategies for a calm, settled household, so investing in them now will reap you many rewards in the future. You can learn all about this powerful real-life strategy in our super Boundary Games online course!
Stop Your Dog Jumping Up with Four Paws on the Floor
How you want your dog to greet people is ultimately up to you. You might simply want all four paws on the floor, or you might prefer your dog to sit or lie down. The key is teaching your dog what TO do, not just what NOT to do.
Did you know that there’s a game to teach your dog to love staying anchored to the ground? Yep, there is!
You can stop your puppy jumping up or teach your older dog to stop jumping up on people (including you!) by playing the Four Paws on the Floor game! In fact, this game can help you start to Solve Jumping Up in Under 5 minutes!
Don’t be in a rush to move to real-life situations too quickly with this game. You can stop your dog jumping up on strangers and people when out walking or when guests enter your home by ensuring that you train FOR the situation (not IN the situation) by growing this game until your dog is absolutely rocking it in easier environments.
Getting those foundations firmly in place will be the key to this learning translating to life, and helping conquer that jumping struggle!
TOP TIP: Scatter feeding is another super strategy to use when teaching your dog not to jump up. Scattering some of their daily food can help add duration to the Four Paws on the Floor game and they will learn to see value in keeping their paws anchored firmly on the ground! It’s such an easy solution to try when you want to stop your dog jumping up!
You Can Stop Your Dog Jumping Up! YOU’VE GOT THIS!
Whether your dog is the littlest of little dogs or the biggest of big dogs, having a dog or puppy who bounces to head height to say hello when you come home or jumps all over your visitors and launches themselves at people you meet on walks can be incredibly stressful.
This blog is filled with terrific tricks, troubleshooting hacks, super strategies and Top Tips for Dogs that Jump Up and by implementing the solutions we’ve got for you here and checking out all the awesome resources we’ve linked in, we know that jumping up will no longer be a problem for you and your dog!
So now you know that you have the ability to transform your dog’s jumping struggles through the power of specific, targeted training games. Would you like to take it to the next level?
Why not check out our course, 10 Days to Stop Jumping, specially designed for dogs who struggle with bouncy behaviours?
