If your dog wants to greet everyone on walks, you may have a problem. Your dog is likely a social butterfly who loves people and is eager to want to meet them. However, not everybody likes dogs and even if there are many people who do like dogs, not everybody may be eager to have a dog invade their personal space, especially when wearing an expensive suit! While it can be a nightmare to walk dogs who don’t like people, those who like people too much can be an equally frustrating problem, especially when the enthusiastic greeting is accompanied by rowdy pulling and overly enthusiastic behaviors such as whining and jumping.
My Dog Wants to Greet Everyone on Walks
If your dog wants to greet everyone on walks, there is good news and bad news. The good news is that you have done a good job in socializing your dog. If your dog wants to greet everyone on walks it means he has learned to associate people with good things.
Seeing people and interacting with them is a reward in your dog’s eyes on its own which is great considering that many dogs are not eager to be around people, let alone strangers. So this warrants a pat on the back for a job well done in the socialization department.
Now to the bad news. If your dog wants to greet everyone on walks, he needs to learn some impulse control. Yes, because realistically speaking, he can’t just continue to want to meet and greet every living being that he sees. Yes, your dog is cute, and loves people, but not always the feelings are mutual and to some people dogs can be annoying, especially if the greeting is accompanied by jumps and licks. Not to mention, if your dog is large, he can easily scratch a person or even knock down a person who is frail or elderly.
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So if your dog wants to greet everyone on walks, you will need to work on the problem. This may or may not be an easy task depending on several factors such as how long your dog has been rehearsing this behavior, how intense it is, and whether you can get the collaboration of the people he wants to meet.
Prevent Rehearsal of Behavior
If your dog wants to greet everyone on walks it’s important that you manage your dog’s environment so to prevent rehearsal of the problem behavior. The more your dog is allowed to rehearse the greeting people behavior, the more the behavior becomes established and more difficult to resolve.
So it’s important that you start taking action to prevent your dog from greeting people on walks. There are several ways you can accomplish this. For instance, walk at a distance from people if a certain proximity triggers your dog’s “I need to go greet behavior.” You may have likely noticed that once your dog turns on his “greeting mode” nothing works to stop him.
Should you be walking on the road and you suddenly see a person coming too close, you can always make an about turn and walk the opposite way. This may appear like rude behavior as if you are avoiding this person, but it’s far better than letting your dog act rowdy and possibly jump all over him/her.
Also, consider what training gear you are using. If your dog is large and you have a hard time controlling him, you may find it helpful to use a no-pull harness or a halter to stop your dog from pulling.
Train the Automatic U-Turn
Management is a great start to help prevent potential pulling and inappropriate greetings, but you must put effort to train an alternative behavior to wanting to greet. In order to prevent your dog from wanting to greet any person on walks, it may therefore help to train the “automatic u-turn.”
Start training this in a quiet area in your home with little distractions. When your dog is a bit at a distance from you, make a smacking sound with your mouth (or a whistle or pop or clicking sound as used for horses) and then hand feed a treat. Repeat several times, about ten to a dozen times until your dog upon hearing the sound comes rushing to you for the treat.
[adinserter block=”2″]Next, start practicing this in the yard, where there are more distractions. Repeat the same exercise as above. You may need to use higher-value treats if your dog appears distracted in the yard. Once, your dog is fluent with this exercise, start practicing this on walks when there are not many people around. If your dog appears distracted, you have two options: increase the value of the treats and/or decrease the level of stimulation, walking in areas that are less populated and then gradually progress from there.
As you see progress and your dog automatically returns to you upon hearing your smacking sound on walks in low distraction areas, it’s time to do this exercise in areas where there are more people. The moment you notice a person that perks your dog’s interest (your dog is eyeballing the person, ears forward, tail starting to wag), make the sound and feed several high value treats in a row.
You want to leave quite an impact here as you want to reward your dog for resisting such a strong temptation and make the behavior of returning to you extra worthy. As you progress, make sure to increase the challenge by asking the automatic u-turn midway when your dog starts to be already in the “I gotta go greet mode.”
Tip: if your dog wants to greet everyone on walks, don’t fall into the bribing trap! Don’t show the treat to get your dog to come to you when. You can do this maybe once or twice initially at the very beginning of training, but then you need to stop or your dog will return to you only if you show the treat. Hold the treat concealed in your pocket, treat bag or closed fist and show it/give it only once your dog returns to you.
The Sit for Petting Exercise
What if you actually want your dog to meet people, but just want your dog act more polite around them? After all, let’s face it, you can’t keep avoiding people and even if you can get your dog to return to you for a treat when a person is closeby, what if, for instance, you want to chat with a group of people with your dog sitting nicely and calm?
In this instance, your dog needs to already know how to sit and stay fluently and move only when released. This takes some practice in impulse control.
When you meet a person, ask your dog to return to you if your dog is walking ahead, and then ask your dog to sit/stay, give the treat, but don’t release your dog yet. Take the time to shake hands with the person and say “hello, how are you?” Then release your dog, and reward him as you move away (this to prevent him from bolting back towards the person). If your dog breaks the stay, leave and try again until your dog is better under control.
Once you have this down, if people wish to pet your dog, ask your dog to sit/stay and let the person pet your dog briefly and then release your dog. Don’t let your dog “auto-release” himself. If your dog auto-releases himself, make an about turn and leave or have the person leave and then try again ad nauseam until your dog understands that sitting and staying grants him attention while wiggling and acting hyper leads to nothing.
Enlist the Help of the Right People
[adinserter block=”2″]It takes the right type of people to train your dog to stop hyper greeting behaviors. You want to avoid like the plague people who are reinforcing inappropriate greeting behaviors. So if you have a friendly neighbor who at the sight of your dog goes “Oh hiii, what a cute puppy you are, here let me pet you” and he/she pets your dog while he’s jumping and acting up all hyper, you want to avoid such encounters.
Say your dog is undergoing training right now, and that if he wants, you may enlist his help further on once your dog is better under control. It is very, very difficult to train polite greetings if you routinely meet people like this. Letting your dog wear a vest stating “dog in training” can help discourage people from coming up close to pet your dog.
It’s therefore important to enlist the help of special volunteers in order to see some progress. Start with just one person. Practice the above exercise repeatedly until your dog does very well and gets the concept. If you apply the exercise correctly, (dog is given rewards when sitting under the form of treats or attention from the person and you or the person leaves if sitting doesn’t occur) you dog should improve. Since you are always practicing with the same person, the person loses a good chunk of his/her saliency and becomes sort of booring. Make sure you lavishly reward success!
Then you can progress to other people, practicing and practicing until they also lose some of their saliency. As you progress, your dog will generalize the sitting behavior with more and more people. You should eventually see a reduction in the hyper behaviors and an increase in the sitting. Make sure there’s little distinction between set-ups and the real thing.
Tip: If your don’t have people to practice with, it’s good idea to enroll your dog in group classes. In particular,you may wish to enroll in the Canine Good Citizen Test which in particular focuses on training dogs to act calm around people and other dogs. Also, consider walking your dog often around people, like groups of people talking, crowds at farmers’ markets etc. If your dog sees people rarely during the day and then on walks sees people, people become too valuable. Seeing people on a daily basis becomes sort of boring in a dog’s eyes in the long run.
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