7. Greetings Intro

Greetings! Meeting new people can be exciting with new smells, people, and other dogs. Habits of jumping onto people can cause accidents. You wouldn’t want your dog knocking over someone else.

Over time, your puppy can start to create behaviors of jumping up, teething, licking, mouthing, or leash pulling. Jumping can be a form of attention seeking (good or bad), excitement, or a learned greeting behavior if left untrained. Here, we’ll tackle greeting people, but learn how to handle other dogs or animals in our next piece on pulling.

Puppies just don’t know any better at their age, so our goal is to guide them to have better social skills and greet new people politely whether they are in the house, outside, or at the park. This may take some practice and might require some help from others in this stage of training but will be important in helping prevent accidents or jumping onto others in the future.

The Training

• Try playing the sitting game with your puppy - every time someone approaches your puppy, they sit! By using positive reinforcement in your training, your puppy will start to learn that great things happen when they don’t jump up to greet others.
• Step 1 is finding a friend (you’ll need them to be your greeter).
• Place your puppy on a short leash (6-foot) that you can hold firmly.
• Have your greeter approach your puppy without coming close enough for your puppy to touch them, even with their paws.
  1. If your puppy starts jumping or pulling at the leash, your greeter should ignore them entirely.
• Stay patient and firm. The moment your puppy loses interest and sits without a command or cue, reward them and have either of your praise them (ie: “good boy!”). Now your greeter can approach and pet them for a one to two-second interval.
• Repeat steps 2 to 6 until your puppy start to sit on their own, be patient.
• If they start to get too excited while greeting, try redirecting their attention for a second or two in the opposite direction and try again. Reward them for their good behavior once they settle.

The Tips

• After some time, your puppy should start to learn and default to this behavior of “sitting & greeting”. Whether your puppy is progressing well or not, we have some tips & tricks to help you two on your way.
• If your puppy is progressing well, you can try upping the challenge for them. Find a few more friends or a nearby puppy class to play a game of rotating greeters. Greeters can try distracting your puppy, purposely creating a highly distracting environment to help advance your pup’s greetings. Greeters can bring toys, feathers, bells, say their name in a high-pitched voice, clap, or anything else that might distract your puppy. It’s about finding what distracts them and then teaching them to ignore it.
• If your puppy isn’t understanding, you can take a step back and that’s perfectly okay!
  1. You can try asking your greeter for some distance. Take a few steps back so you can settle your puppy.
  2. Sometimes puppies might have too much energy. Try taking them for a long walk or to the dog park before you start their training!
  3. Are you somewhere new? You can try letting them explore an area for a few minutes to relieve their curiosity (and relieve themselves) and then starting the training process. Once they’re familiar with the new environment, it will be easier to get started!

Managing Situations & Others

• Remember that your puppy is on leash. If your puppy gets overexcited or a situation becomes overwhelming, you can try using treats to redirect their attention or walk away.
• Additionally, if you find strangers are running up to pet your puppy, simply let them know how you’d like them to interact with your puppy and set boundaries.
• Finally, if your puppy stops behaving, you can instruct your greeters to stop petting or giving attention to your puppy. Backing off for a few moments can allow them to settle down and helps to teach them that only politeness will get them pets.
• As your puppy grows and starts to master greetings, you can start using less treats and stop requiring them to always be on leash. Remember to stay consistent - even if a new greeter is okay with them jumping on them, don’t let them or it could lead to undoing the training you’ve worked hard on. 

Disclaimer

The video and/or my content cannot guarantee that the learning method is right for your dog. The information I give is based on my knowledge and opinion of different learning types and is not directly endorsed by professionals. The methods shown within the video are meant to be used for demonstration purposes and do not guarantee success with all dogs. If you have any specific questions or concerns regarding the information, please reach to us through our Contact Page and we can get in touch.