Stop Dog Jumping: A Positive Approach to Stopping Dog Jumping Without Punishment

Jumping behavior in dogs is completely manageable through positive reinforcement techniques rather than punishment-based methods that cause fear, pain, or intimidation. Using differential reinforcement, you can teach your dog to sit for greetings instead of jumping, creating a lasting behavior change that preserves your relationship.

• Dogs jump to meet face-to-face and because we've accidentally reinforced this behavior
• Jumping continues when we give attention (positive or negative) as a response
• Four main causes: face-to-face greeting, attention-seeking, poor self-regulation, and anxiety
• Traditional punishment methods damage trust and your relationship with your dog
• Teach your dog to sit when approaching from 1-2 feet away and reward generously
• Start with low distractions and gradually increase difficulty as your dog succeeds
• Turn away immediately if your dog jumps, removing all attention
• Use management tools like leashes and gates during the training process
• Practice with guests using the same approach-and-sit technique
• Any behavior can be taught or eliminated using positive reinforcement

Check out my website at dogbehaviorist.com for my article on how to stop dogs from jumping, along with about 100 other articles on dog behavior.

Chapters

• 0:00 Why Dogs Jump and the Problem with Punishment
• 9:03 Understanding Jumping Behavior's Root Causes
• 17:30 Teaching Sit as an Alternative Response
• 24:13 Managing the Environment During Training
• 33:21 Stopping Jumps on Guests and Practical Steps

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Do you have a dog that jumps on you and goes crazy when you come home? Maybe you've got a dog that jumps on guests and it's embarrassing to have anybody over to the house. Jumping behavior by dogs is one of the most common behavior problems that pet parents experience with their dogs and for eons, the way that pet parents have been taught to deal with jumping is to punish their dog. One of the most common ways that they were told to deal with this is to knee the dog in the chest or use a shock collar or a prong collar or a can that's got pennies in it and throw that at the dog or compress air and throw that at the dog or compress air. Any kind of correction, any kind of punishment, causes a certain level of fear, pain and intimidation. Now, I'm not saying that you can't get results using punishment and corrections. What I want to tell you is it's completely unnecessary. You can stop any behavior using positive reinforcement. You can train in any behavior using positive reinforcement. Now, I've been training dogs for 35 years. Back when I first started, it was all about punishment. It was all about corrections prong collars, shock collars, choke chains. However, today, in the year 2025, no educated, no certified trainer, behaviorist behavior consultant uses corrections or punishment. We know through science, we know through research and I specifically know through years and years of training dogs and experience. Punishment and corrections are not necessary and I work with the dogs that have the most serious behaviors reactivity, aggression, hyperactivity, excitability, distractibility. You don't have to use punishment Now. If you're brand new to dog training today, I want to welcome you for being here. Thank you so much If you've been a listener for a while. Thank you for your continued support. Do me a favor hit that subscribe button. Give us a five-star review. Yeah, take just a minute if you would, and then I'll get right back into the show. But our rankings only remain high or go up if you give us a review. That's the way the algorithms work. That's the way ranking works, so I don't want to ask for it and waste any more time, but we appreciate it when you do that.

Speaker 1: 2:41

All right, let's talk about jumping. Now, why do dogs jump on people? Okay, well, you know, when a dog meets another dog, they meet the dog face to face. Think about it. They meet the dog face to face always, and so when dogs meet us, they jump up to get to the face. That's one reason. The other reason is that from the moment a dog, when they're a puppy, starts jumping up on us, we usually are reinforcing that behavior. We're petting the dog, especially when they're cute little puppies. But then when they get to be about 50, 60 pounds, it's not so cute when they're jumping up on us. Oh, it was just fine when they weighed five pounds, when they weighed eight pounds, when they weighed eight pounds. But now that they're bigger, now it's a problem.

Speaker 1: 3:31

Dogs will jump when there's a lot of excitement and for certain rituals that you might have greeting your dog, all right. When you come home, if you're unbelievably energetic and excited, that's going to amp the dog up more, won't it? And then your dog's much more likely to want to jump on you. They're excited, they're happy, you're excited, you're happy, jumping's going on. You're petting your dog and then all of a sudden you're hoping or wishing it would stop, and then all of a sudden you're hoping or wishing it would stop. So part of it is us not reinforcing this behavior, because dogs will jump for attention and they quickly learn that jumping gets a reaction, whether it's a happy greeting or whether it's you pushing them away, telling them no, hey, they're still receiving attention. Another reason why dogs jump some dogs struggle with self-regulation, especially if they've not been taught an alternative behavior or if they've got a history of like I was talking about a second ago you reinforcing them by petting them, giving them attention when there's high energy, greetings and things that are going on, and that kind of jumps into the fourth reason why dogs jump, and that's overstimulation or, in some cases, anxiety. You know dogs experiencing stress or excitement, they may jump, sometimes as a displacement behavior. Some dogs even jump when they're uncertain or they're nervous about a particular interaction. But when we address the underlying reasons behind jumping and when we begin implementing a structured training plan, we can effectively prevent this behavior from happening.

Speaker 1: 5:30

Now let me talk about why punishment is not the answer. Okay, first of all, punishment doesn't teach your dog what to do and we already kind of talked about. You know, in many ways the reason the dog's jumping is because you've been reinforcing it. They've been getting positive reinforcement for jumping. You've helped to condition them to jump. If you're coming in the door and you're excitable, that excitability also is part of what's getting them to jump. We've been setting our dogs up for failure and now we want to punish them out of frustration, out of not knowing another way and out of tradition, because that's what people have done for so long and many of you just don't know another alternative. But you know dogs that jump due to excitement or anxiety. They may escalate their behavior if they get corrected or punished. But the big thing, the big thing, your dogs know that the punishment, the corrections are coming from you and the only way that a correction, the only way that punishment works, the dog has to experience some level of fear, pain or intimidation so the dog doesn't want to do the behavior again. Well, that can severely damage the relationship that you have with your dog, the trust, the bond. And if you love your dog and I know you do, or you wouldn't be listening If you love your dog, you're. Why would you use correction and punishment when I'm telling you it's unnecessary, you don't have to use it and there's a better way.

Speaker 1: 7:12

The most effective approach is to use positive reinforcement to teach an alternative, incompatible behavior, such as sitting and rewarding calm greetings. So we're going to talk about that. A lot of trainers will tell you hey, positive reinforcement is great for teaching behavior, but it's not going to get your dog to stop doing something, especially when your dog's excited and distracted. That's simply wrong. In positive reinforcement we have a thing called differential reinforcement. Think different. When I say differential, all right, dri is differential reinforcement of an incompatible behavior.

Speaker 1: 7:52

If your dog is taught to sit instead of jumping and your dog's getting highly rewarded for that, and you practice that over and over and you get that condition and you stop reinforcing jumping behavior, and when you start to manage the environment to prevent your dog from jumping, that jumping behavior is going to fade and what you're going to have is you're going to have a dog that, rather than jumps on you when you come home, or rather than jumps on a guest when they come over, the dog's going to sit quietly for a greeting. So let's talk about how we do this. Well, first of all, your dog has to know how to sit. So if your dog doesn't know how to sit, the first thing you need to do is get that behavior on cue or command. Your dog needs to learn how to sit. Now I'm going to assume, for the sake of this podcast, that your dog already knows how to sit, okay, well, what you're going to want to begin to do is have your dog, when it's at a distance from you, start moving towards you calmly. You can simply do that by very calmly, standing still away from your dog, saying your dog's name. Now your dog's going to probably start moving towards. You Know that there is momentum going on, there's inertia.

Speaker 1: 9:22

If you ask for sit right when your dog gets to you, chances are your dog's already launching and jumping. Okay, so what you want to begin to do and you're doing this in a controlled way this is a planned proactive training session. You get your dog to come to you when your dog's about one to two feet away from you. Ask for sit, ask for sit and then reward your dog, and do that again and again and again, over and over. Ask your dog Every time your dog comes toward you. Ask for sit, but do it when your dog's a foot or two away from you. Now, if your dog's coming in slowly, you might be able to ask for sit when the dog's a little bit closer and eventually you'll be able to get the dog to sit right when it comes up to you and you won't have to get the dog sitting when it's a foot or two away from you. But chances are, if the dog's moving quickly and when the dog's a foot or two away from you you ask for sit, the dog's still going to be moving and will probably end up sitting when it's right in front of you. Make sure you've got high value food rewards. Make sure that you are rewarding that behavior.

Speaker 1: 10:34

Again, this is proactive. I want you to do this proactively about five, seven, eight times in a row and do that every day. It doesn't take long. This is like a five, ten minute training exercise. Okay Now another thing that's important. We're just talking about you. We're not talking about jumping on guests. Yet we're going to get to that as your dog gets good at this.

Speaker 1: 11:04

And you start this with low or no excitability, low or no distractions. But you've got to start adding distractions. You've got to start adding excitability. But you start off low and over time, over days, over weeks, gradually, systematically, you're going to get a little more excitable. You're going to use that happy, jolly tone. You're going to maybe move a little bit faster, move with a little more excitement. But if your dog's failing when you ask it to sit, and you're doing that and your dog was succeeding before, well, you've taken these distractions, you've taken the excitability and you've made it too much too soon. Dial back the excitability, dial back the distractions where your dog is still having success. Well, what I want you to do is I just want you to immediately turn away from your dog and cross your hands and if your dog goes around you, to jump on you again, turn away from the dog. If your dog does it a third time, what I want you to do is walk into another room, walk away from your dog. We've got to stop reinforcing the behavior and when your dog experiences attention or something pleasant, when it's jumping, that just strengthens that jumping behavior and we don't want that to happen.

Speaker 1: 12:39

Now, when it comes to guests and this is where controlling the environment is really important Environmental management While you're working through the problem. Once you've done the behavior modification and the training, you won't have to manage the environment. How do you do that? Having leashes on your dog before a guest walks in the door, having your dog behind a baby gate? You know, one of the things that a lot of people don't get is that when you're trying to change your behavior, if your dog keeps having the opportunity to, over and over again, rehearse the old behavior, rehearse the behavior that we don't want. It just gets more and more conditioned and that's more and more difficult for us to get that habit and that conditioning out of your dog.

Speaker 1: 13:29

Let me veer off path for an exam for a second. Let me give you an example a little bit different but very similar. My dog, boo, who's a miniature schnauzer for years, has likes to snuggle on the couch, and I'm great with that. I'm fine with my dog being on the couch and I'm fine with my dog jumping up on the couch and jumping down. Well, that was all fine and good until Boo slipped a disc, yeah, yeah, now. Now I've got a problem because for six years Boo's been jumping up on the couch to be greeted by myself and my wife and gets all kinds of love, praise and affection. So that's been positively reinforced. It's not just a habit, not just a conditioned habit, but a conditioned habit that's been strengthened over and over again through positive reinforcement, even if it's just us going, oh good girl. Or petting her when she gets up there.

Speaker 1: 14:29

So, being the behaviorist and the trainer that I am, I'm like hey, I got this, let me go buy some stairs and I will just start teaching Boo to go up the stairs, reward the dog, go down the stairs, reward the dog and do lots of repetition of up the stairs reward, down the stairs, reward and on. We went, only to then later in the evening be sitting on the couch watching TV. And what does my dog, boo, do? Jump up on the couch, bypassing the stairs altogether. So for about two or three days I'm struggling with this and I'm thinking to myself hey, will, what would you tell your clients to do? I need to make it so.

Speaker 1: 15:16

There's no way that boo can jump up on the couch, there's no way that boo can jump off the couch until I've successfully conditioned and trained in the new behavior, and the new behavior is using the stairs to go up, to get on the couch, using the stairs to come down, not jumping up and down the couch. The only way that I was able to stop that was to get an X-pen and block off the couch, except for the area where the stairs are are. I've got to continue to work on conditioning and positively reinforcing going up the stairs, going down the stairs, going up the stairs, going down the stairs proactively. But now, when Boo wants to get up on the couch to snuggle, she doesn't have any other option, but to go up those stairs when she wants to come off. There's only one option come off those stairs because she can't jump off into the X-pen. She can't jump up with the X-pen blocking the couch. Now, that X-pen I don't want there. Yeah, it's an eyesore, I get it. You don't want one, I don't want one, but it's necessary If I'm going to have success. It's necessary. It's tools like that that we have to use.

Speaker 1: 16:45

So getting back to a dog jumping on people if you have guests over and you can't manage your dog, your dog needs to be behind a baby gate, your dog needs to be confined. To be behind a baby gate, your dog needs to be confined. But if being behind a baby gate or being confined and your dog seeing guests gets your dog more amped up, more excited, well I don't like that. I want your dog going somewhere else where it's not going to be as excited, because now we're conditioning the dog to get more frustrated because the dog can't get to the people and that just brings up that excitement level the next time the dog's out with people.

Speaker 1: 17:21

But what you've got to do, just like you were doing proactive training sessions with you and your dog, teaching your dog that whenever it comes towards you that it needs to sit. You've got to do the same thing with guests, so you've got to get some helpers. You've got to get guests to come over to, so you've got to get some helpers. You've got to get guests to come over to the house. You need to put a leash on your dog and as your dog is going up to the stranger about two feet before they get in front of that stranger, you need to ask for sit and make sure with that leash your dog can't get any closer. And then you begin rewarding your dog for sitting and giving a calm, polite greeting. And you need to do that over and over and over. Eventually you can actually have the guest give the food reward if your dog remains sitting, if your dog remains calm. But if they don't right now, then you do the rewarding Now, little by little, gradually, as you're having success with that.

Speaker 1: 18:28

Again, every time your dog comes up to you, you're asking for sit. Every time your dog's going up towards a stranger, you're asking for sit. Every time your dog does that, you're rewarding the dog. You're proactively doing training sessions every day where you're doing this six, seven, eight, nine, 10 times in a row. It's going to take you about five, 10 minutes to do this. And when you're unable to do that, you manage things so that your dog can't jump on strangers. If your dog jumps on you, you turn away from the dog, eliminating the positive reinforcement, eliminating you giving your dog attention.

Speaker 1: 19:20

So the idea here is that, rather than punishing and causing even if it's a mild level of fear, pain or intimidation to your dog, through punishment and correction, we're teaching the dog hey, do this behavior instead, sit and be calm and good things happen. And when you stop reinforcing the behavior you don't want and you proactively start reinforcing behaviors you do want, those old behaviors melt away and your dog starts defaulting to the kind of behaviors that you want. None of this, none of this works when all heck breaks loose and things are crazy. If you didn't train in that kind of energy and environment. But hey, that's not going to happen.

Speaker 1: 20:04

On day one you start with no distractions, low distractions Again, little by little, you increase the excitability. And if your dog keeps failing when you increase the excitability, hey, you've just upped the distraction level, you've upped the excitement too much, too soon. Just dial it back a little so that your dog can have some success again. If your dog's never kind of making a mistake, well, maybe you're not challenging the dog enough. But don't punish your dog. If your dog is making mistake after mistake after mistake, that's feedback that we're doing something wrong. Maybe the distractions are too much. We need to evaluate what it is that we're doing.

Speaker 1: 20:55

But like I said at the beginning of the podcast, listen, there is no behavior that you can't teach with positive reinforcement. There is no behavior that you can't stop with positive reinforcement. Any behavior can be done. And listen, I work with dogs that are very severe severe aggression, severe reactivity and if it works with that, it'll work with this. Well, that music means we are, we're out of time. Hopefully you got something out of this podcast. You can also find my article on how to stop dogs from jumping by going to my website at dogbehavioristcom. I've got about 100 articles there. Look for the article on how to stop your dog from jumping, and this podcast will be sitting right at the bottom of that article as well. Until next time, practice, practice. No, it doesn't make perfect, but it makes for permanence. Practice with your dogs, have fun, use positive reinforcement. Punishment's not necessary. Your dog will love you for it. Have a good one. I'm out of here.