How to Teach Your Dog to Stop Jumping

Does your dog jump on everyone? This can be an irritating issue for pet parents, and can even be dangerous if small children or humans with difficulty walking or balancing visit. One well-placed jump can knock over a fully grown person and can be terrifying for a small child.

But breaking your dog’s jumping habits isn’t always easy. One technique the works for one dog, may not work for the next. That’s why it’s important to try a variety of approaches to find one that work for your dog.

​Just remember, positive training works best and consistency on your part is the most important aspect of any training session. In a sense, training your dog is much more about adjusting YOUR behavior than it is about adjusting theirs.

​Many times, a dog jumps because we have inadvertently taught them to jump by rewarding them with petting and attention when they are excited to see us. Make jumping NOT rewarding to stop the behavior, here’s how:

What Not To Do: 

The Trainer below makes some valid point on the urgency of properly training your pup not to jump. Unfortunately, his methods not only appear to inhumane and cruel, but are also potentially dangerous. Such trauma to the throat of your dog can cause severe acute or long term medical conditions, such as laryngeal paralysis. Just because the dog does not show symptoms immediately does not mean that the condition will not gradually worsen or just suddenly occur at some point in life. 

When training your pup, please keep in mind that their neck and throat are susceptible to injury as our own.

​Understand why dogs jump and learn how to manage jumping, including what to do when human guests won’t follow the rules:

Try ignoring the jumper, and learn what NOT to do to curb this behavior:

Try exercising a high energy dog before training, or you’re basically asking for the dog to jump because they simply can’t control their excess energy any other way: