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Writer's pictureHannah Parrett

Why does my dog jump up?

Most of the time, most dogs that jump up are essentially after your attention. Your focus, your body orientation, your hands, your voice, something your eating, YOU YOU YOU!!! There are of course, circumstances where dogs will try and get rid of you by jumping up, but this will have a very different feel to it and will probably hurt more than those that jump up for attention.


Here we will focus on the uber friendly dogs that are desperate for your attention :)


Generally speaking, if we know what a dog wants, we have everything we need at our disposal to change his or her behaviour, without adding anything else (like treats).

If we know our dog wants our attention, they for SURE will notice what they're doing when we give it to them. So if it's jumping up and down, barking in our face that causes us to look at them, they'll bank that as the correct behaviour to get our attention.

Now then, there is an oft peddled fix for jumping up which is 'turn your back and cross your arms to ignore your dog jumping up'. The principle is correct, but the method is flawed.

For starters, if you ACTIVELY ignore your dog by thinking 'I'm ignoring you' and actively turning your back and actively crossing your arms, your dog has absolutely noticed that he has your attention. Which is what he wants. Now he has your attention, even if he can make you spin with your nose in the air, it's not quite what he's after, so he's going to try other stuff to get you to look at him. Probably jumping up and bouncing off you at the top of the jump. He might then try other stuff, like barking, or ragging on your trouser leg, but as long as you're 'actively' ignoring him, he'll know he has your attention.


So what to do?


You can try passively ignoring him - make a cup of tea, wander off and read a book, play with your phone - anything that engages your attention. Once he's given up jumping up and down like a fool, which might take ten minutes if you've previously rewarded this behaviour by looking at him (yes, even whilst you were shouting at him).

BUT the absolute key to retraining this behaviour, is passively sneaking a peek out of the corner of your eye and waiting for him to sit, quit, all four feet on the floor or better yet go to sleep, before you actively get up and go over to him to give him the loving he sooooooo craves. How you get up is really important. If you go in fast and squeaky, he'll leap up and do his fool dance for you again.

If you keep your energy low, your movement soft (but not with a stalking feel), and your expression calm, and kind, and softly stroke his chest, you should have a very very different picture.


You'll need to prevent his jumping up at strangers until you've taught him he needs to do this to interact with ALL people, especially little ones. Prevention generally looks like a crate or a lead.


Troubleshooting:


If your dog has jumped up and been cuddled 1000 times in his life, it might take a minute to retrain. Don't give up!


If your dog is allowed to jump up for his dinner, or to have his lead put on, or just before you go for a walk, or out on a walk, he'll use it all the time for everything. If on the other hand, you wait for your dog to sit politely before you give him any single thing he wants, he will absolutely generalise 'sitting gets me what I want quickly' and will trial that first. You've got to be watching though, because if you miss his trials of the sit, he won't wait long before he's off into previously successful behaviours like leaping up and down like a fool and barking whilst hoofing you in the nuts and scraping your thighs.......


You can also enhance the sit by reserving special treats for asking him to sit and wait.


Happy communicating! :)





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