Why Dogs Jump on People

Series Summary

Man's best friend can quickly turn into man's worst enemy if your furry pal jumps up and places its muddy paws on your evening attire as you're going out for the night. Similarly it's no real treat when a rambunctious canine greets you at the door with claws and paws in your chest. Your friends probably don't like it much either. If your dog has the nasty habit of jumping up on you and your friends, rest assured that the habit can be broken; our expert dog trainer can show you for free, online, how to train your dog not to jump on people.

In this free online video series, learn from expert dog trainer Elise McMahon, Ph.D., how to train your dog to not jump on people as a greeting. Elise will explain why dogs jump on people and how to teach them an alternative greeting. She will demonstrate how to train dogs using memory recall games, dog leashes, and distractions; how to train your dog to not jump without punishing them or getting furious at them; and how to practice by letting your dog greet you at the door.

Video Transcript

"So the first question when we are teaching dogs not to jump on up on people is really the first question is really why do dogs jump on people in the first place. Maybe if we can understand what the dog is getting at we can understand a little bit better how to not to do it. So with pups and wolf pups, dog pups they will come and greet the face of a adult it is a submissive jester and they come and lick and nibble and chew on the lips of a adult that is the parent in a case of wolves, it could be any member of the wolf pack and it will stimulate the adult to regurgitate food for the pups. So this is a very instinctual, ingrain behavior that young dogs do to younger dogs and submissive animals do to more domestic animals is this greeting of the face. Dogs always want to greet our face, they want to lick our mouths, so perhaps this is something left over form there communication, there interaction with each other. The problem is for us our heads all the way up and in order for them to get here they have to jump across our bodies and we don't always like that so we want to we really want to understand why they are trained to do it but we also want to teach them we don't want them actually themselves into our face, chewing onto our lips and being generally obnoxious as far as humans are concerned. So now that we have talked a little bit of why they might be doing this to us we are going to move on looking at how we can actually redirect that behavior, teach them not to greet us that way and teach them a alternative greeting behavior for humans such as a little bit more appropriate when they are enacting with us. "