A puppy excited when greeting dogs and people can feel like a difficult problem to overcome. Many puppy owners are dealing with this problem and seeking help on ways to calm down their puppy. Fortunately, there are several things puppy owners can do with their puppies to teach them better ways to cope with all their excitement. In most cases, care in not reinforcing undesirable behaviors, lots of socialization, time and persistence is all that’s needed to help a puppy excited when greeting dogs and people learn better impulse control.
Puppy Excited When Greeting Dogs and People?
One very important step that is often overlooked in a puppy excited when greeting dogs and people is preventing rehearsal of the problem behavior. What does this mean? It means that the puppy should not be always allowed to meet people or dogs on outings, because when they are allowed their excitement is being rewarded. This is am important dog management plan.
In other words, if your puppy whines and pulls, and every time she performs these behaviors she gets to greet people or other dogs, the behavior of whining and pulling will be reinforced. Reinforced behavior will over time become more strong and strong and harder to extinguish.
On top of that, consider that in a puppy excited when greeting dogs and people there’s such as thing known as “conditioned excitement.’ In other words, the pup learn to automatically become excited the moment he sees a dog or person. The conditioning process is similar to when a dog gets excited when you grab the food bowl or leash. Only, that these dogs get super excited when they anticipate seeing dogs and people and this excitement may even get overboard and even start when taken on a car ride to places he gets to see people and dogs.
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It’s important therefore to tackle this behavior as early as possible and not once the puppy has grown into an 80 pound massive dog. Preventing rehearsal of the problem behavior is a good management plan to implement, but it requires diligent work. This also means, letting other people around you know that your puppy is in training and people should avoid approaching her. This is often harder said than done considering people’s tendencies to approach puppies because they are too adorable.
Ongoing Socialization in Crowded Areas
Have you ever seen how well behaved dogs are in the city? Dog and puppies who get overly excited are often those who live in country or in the suburbs. Why? Jean Donaldson in her book “Dogs are from Neptune” calls it “Suburban Dog Syndrome.” Because these dogs don’t get to see dogs or people on a daily basis these stimuli become extra, extra salient to them. This means that in order to better learn to cope with their excitement they will have to be flooded with all these stimuli until they get to the point of appearing as super boring.
This means taking puppies often to crowded areas where there are lots of dogs and people around. There should be a high concentration of such stimuli, almost to the point of saturation. The puppy should not be allowed to interact. You would just walk with the flow nonchalantly going from point A to point B.
The first days, you may notice the excitement waxing and waning, but eventually the pup should adjust to seeing lots of people and dogs walking by. Initially your puppy may get a bit exited and overstimulated by all the sights, sounds and smells, but this can only last so much because it’s tiring to the senses to always be on a such a stimulated state.
At some point, after doing these walks preferably on a daily basis, you may notice that your puppy may only get excited if perhaps somebody makes eye contact and starts talking to the puppy or some other overly rambunctious dog barks at her in hopes of a play session. If you teach your puppy to go on with the walk, and offer a tasty tidbit for paying attention to you, she’ll learn to not attend to these distractions, which brings to the next tip.
A Lesson in Impulse Control
Of course, not everybody has the time and luxury to drive to the city to allow their puppies to be exposed to all this stimulation. In that case, there are several other things they can be done, albeit it may take a bit longer to accomplish. If you own a puppy excited when greeting dogs and people, something to consider also is that it is totally natural for pups to be excited about the world around them, they have short attention spans and they will generally start calming down as they mature. Here are a few tips for teaching your puppy more impulse control.
Invest in Special Gear
As mentioned, when your puppy pulls and whines to meet people or other dogs, his excitement is getting reinforced. To extinguish this behavior, it’s important to stop adding fuel to the fire. Invest in special gear if your puppy tends to pull towards dogs and people. This especially applies to large puppies. There may be times you cannot contain your puppy despite your best effort and he gets to meet the dog or person, which only teaches your puppy to pull harder.
If you are walking your pup on a regular buckle collar, you may therefore want to switch to a “no-pull harness,” also known as a “front attachment harness” such as the Sensation harness or Walk your Dog with Love harness. These harnesses provides owners with more steering power as it controls the dog’s shoulders and chest.
Train a U-Turn
[adinserter block=”1″]The U-turn can be helpful for a puppy excited when greeting dogs and people. If you see people interested in your puppy or some rambunctious dog coming straight at your pup, it helps to make a quick about-turn so that you and your pup won’t be put into a situation that will set your puppy for fail (or a situation that may turn dangerous as you don’t know how friendly the other dog really is). Here is a brief guide on how to train this.
Once again, find a quiet area such as a hallway. Use small, bite-sized treats your puppy loves. Despite being small, these small pieces work their purpose and are easy to give one after another. To train a U-turn, I use a training method known as “luring” .
Hold a treat in your hand with your pup on your left side. Turn to your left, while keeping the treat in your right hand, lure your puppy behind your legs and then give the treat when your pup is back to the heel position on your left side. Practice this in different locations with different distractions.
Play the Attention Game
Puppies are often told what not to do, but they benefit from being told what to do instead. Something you can do is try with a puppy excited when greeting dogs and people is to divert your pup’s attention from the dog or person to you.
Yes, let’s face it, this may sound easier said than done in a dog who doesn’t see people or dogs on a daily basis, however, if you take baby steps and practice for several outings, you may eventually start seeing some results.
Here’s how to teach this exercise. At home, in a quiet room with little to no distractions, make a smacking noise with your mouth and bring a treat at eye level. The moment your pup looks up, say “yes!” and give the treat. Next, practice this in motion. Walk around, make the smacking sound with your mouth, bring the treat at eye level saying “yes’ and giving your puppy the treat the moment he makes eye contact.
Next, practice outdoors in an area with no not many distractions, like the yard. Gradually, work your way up to more distracting environments but with dogs and people at a distance from where your puppy doesn’t react and is better under threshold.
If your puppy at any time loses focus on you, consider that she’s likely not ready for that certain level of distraction. No problem, just increase distance or if your puppy looks tired, end the training on a positive note and resume another day.
At some point, you may want to further raise criteria. Enlist the help of some volunteers and ask them to walk past your dog and totally ignore him while you work on playing the attention game. Again, make sure you evaluate your pups’ reaction to you and the person. If he can’t focus, work from a farther distance and build up some progress gradually from there.
Reinforce Polite Greetings
Of course, puppies thrive on getting attention from people and playing with other dogs, and there is a way to make this happen in a controlled setting. Once your puppy has learned to pay attention to you when you walk past people and dogs, it’s time to train your pup more polite greetings. Train your puppy calmer behaviors such as targeting people’s hands.
Alternatively, you can ask for other calm behaviors such as sitting or lying down. Now, young puppies with little impulse control may have a hard time sitting for too long, so while you chat with people, you can try tossing treats to the ground for a fun on-the-go treasure hunt game or provide your pup with a stuffed Kong to interact with. This gives your puppy an alternate behavior to perform rather than the rowdy behaviors.
Puppy and dog owners need to work on this also because they need to consider that not all people are eager to meet puppies and not all dogs do as well. Things can get embarrassing when the person at the receiving isn’t very fond of dogs or even scared of them. Some dogs can get even aggressive when greeted by an boisterous pup.
In order to reduce the behavior of a puppy excited when greeting dogs and people, you will, therefore, have to implement some new rules for your pup and the people he meets. You may have to make changes to your dog’s walking gear if your pup is very large and powerful. Last, but not least, you may have to implement some behavior modification protocols so that your pup can learn a replacement behavior (to substitute for running up to people).’
If you want your pup to play with other dogs, it’s best not to allow this when you are out on walks. Otherwise your pup will think every dog he meets equals a play session. Instead, organize at home play sessions with other vaccinated healthy pups or enroll him in puppy classes. Before releasing your pup to play, ask him for a calm behavior such as sit or down and then release him to play.
As seen, there are several ways you can deal with a puppy excited when greeting dogs and people. Often the best strategy is a combination of strategies that your puppy best responds to.
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