Jumping Up on People
COMMON PROBLEM 1
Since puppies’ strongest ability is their sense of smell, and since their primary purpose during the first eight months of life is to investigate and learn about everything in their new world, they will naturally want to check out and smell every human that comes into their environment.
As humans, the strongest scents we project come from our genital area and from our mouths. We’ve all had the experience of a less-than-well-mannered dog sniffing our crotch areas – though within the dog world, sniffing genitals is considered good manners! Puppies need to stand up on their hind legs and put their paws on a person in order to get close to those areas. Since we tend to cover our genital areas with clothes, the next strongest scent for a dog to check out is coming from our mouths. Puppies and small dogs will want to jump up to get closer to our faces and find out what’s going on there.
It's a challenge for humans not to see a puppy jumping on them as an “I love you” or a “hug.” The truth is, sometimes puppies are just anxious, and they have learned that if they jump on the human, the human, the human will pick them up and bring them toward them and calm them down. Unfortunately, this is a Band-Aid solution. The behavior you want to remove is not gone. It’s only put on pause. When you stop a puppy and scoop her up in the middle of an anxious moment, you are never allowing her to develop the vital life skill of learning to calm herself down, on the ground.
As always, I advocate that prevention is the best medicine. You can avert the jumping-up problem from day one by practicing NO touch, NO talk, NO eye contact rule whenever you first greet the puppy. This sends a calming signal and helps a puppy to stay focused on her nose. Her nose will keep her on the ground, and her ears will react differently.
The second step is to really claim every step you make. Own your space and ignore or actively discourage jumping behavior by moving through it calmly and assertively. What works for me is turning around, looking in the dog’s eyes, and putting the palm of my hand out in front of me, a gesture that most dogs immediately recognize as meaning “stop.”
Ultimately, that is the key to stopping any unwanted puppy behavior – making sure you don’t’ go into your own emotional fulfillment mode and get caught up in how extremely cute the puppy is. Patience and repetition are the solutions. You need to stay consistent with your discouragement of your pup’s jumping, even though it looks so adorable and joyful.
Yes, she may be the cutest thing on four paws. But as a pack leader, you have to go beyond that and really honor what the puppy needs from you at that moment.