Last week I said I would talk about “jumping up on people” – something I know a lot about.  Now even though my assistant has worked with me on “stay down”, I am still  just a big wiggly bundle poised to leap into your arms when I meet you.

Notice how she uses the words “stay down” rather than “get down” or “don’t jump”.    Instead of training me NOT to do something, she is rewarding me when I DO something.  This  “something” that she teaches is “staying seated” when we want to say “Hey, hello, nice to meet you, good to see you, missed you so much” or some other equivalent.

You see, face-to-face greetings are an essential part of the dog greeting process.  So is checking each other to make sure we are wearing the right tails.  After we get to know each other, we don’t need to check tails no more, but we do like to sniff each other’s faces.  In fact, we are expected to want to touch and lick the Alpha dog.  Sort of like bowing to the emperor or something.

So our jumping up is just an extension of us wanting to meet you face to face and give you salutations in a manner befitting to your station in the dog pack. 

Now most of us canines think that strange people are sort of like strange dogs EXCEPT we know that they are somehow above us on the dog pack management hierarchy.  So those of us who have had mostly good experiences with people just want to jump up and lick strangers in the face.

 Then there are other canines that are born a little timid or shy, and we turn out different depending on our experiences with humans.  We either look at our person for clues of what to do, or we run and hide, or we bark ferociously, or we even attack.  I was one of those dogs who needed to take cues from my human. I was born suspicious of everything and I could have swung either way, friendly or mean. 

            So jumping up on strangers isn’t as bad as it sounds when you look at the alternatives.  And for the most part, most dogs are born trusting people. Which is a good thing for you people but can go bad for us canines.

            O.K., O.K, so you still don’t want us to jump up on you.  First of all YOU have to stop rewarding us for jumping up.  How many of you just sort of unconsciously pet us when we jump up?  How many of you actually pick up your small canine companions when they jump up? How many of you don’t even notice we are jumping up until you have on nice clothes and we come running through a freshly plowed field of red dirt ready to give you our usual greeting? 

            Uh Huh, that’s what I thought.  You cannot expect us to know when we can and cannot jump on you.   And if you want to make sure we never jump on you or other people, it is best if you NEVER reward us for jumping up. 

Instead you teach us to “stay down”.  You have to reward us for “staying down.”  Then you can go back and teach “jump up” if you want, but it can get really confusing if you aren’t really consistent. 

            So by now you are wondering when I am actually going to tell you something you can use.   So here’s what you do to teach, “stay down”.

 When your dog comes to greet you say “stay down” and reward him with a food reward.  If and when your dog goes to jump up on you, swivel around with a sort of body block away from your dog until he sits down.  Be patient, he will eventually sit.  Then turn around, reward with food and say “Good Dog” in that high squeaky voice that I’ve talked about before.  Now do this over and over.  Never pet us when we are jumping up.  Always reward us when we remain sitting.

            Again, to make this “stay down” behavior really work, you have to never, ever reward us for doing what comes naturally – jumping up.  And the reason this is so hard is because most of you dog people are doing what feels natural to you.  You are just greeting a “Greeting” with a “Greeting”.

            We dogs can tell by the way strangers look at us whether they like us or not.  Some of you give us all kinds of cues that say “jump up on me, I love dogs”.   And if we canines are around enough people who give us those cues, then we don’t get it when one of you doesn’t want our Greeting.  It never occurs to us not to jump because we are following the rules, as we understand them. 

            You know,  different cultures greet one another in different ways.  In some cultures it is polite to speak to one another using each other’s names every time you see that person.  Other cultures ignore each other unless they want something specific.  Most family canines are just saying hello when we jump up on you.  It is up to you to teach us your custom if you don’t want us to “jump up”.

            Oh, by the way, I try to stay down when I meet strangers but it is just sooooo hard.  And I jump all over my assistant.  She taught me to “stay down” but just found it too hard to continue reinforcing the “stay down” behavior all the time.  It took too much retraining on her part. 

            Like I said last week, the hardest thing to train is how “not to do something”.  And with “jumping up” both dog and human have to stop doing something that they find mutually rewarding.  And that doesn’t seem natural to me.  But then I’m just a dog.

            Talk at ya later,

Elwood