Is your puppy ready to welcome new guests over the house? With this calm greeting exercise, you’ll teach your puppy to become a well-behaved host!
@smooshy_mooshy
Planning on having guests coming over the house sometime in the future?
Puppies love new people. So much so, they literally jump for joy! But as they age, that behavior can become difficult to manage and troublesome when someone gets pummeled by a 70-pound Labrador puppy!
We’re going to teach you the steps to teach your puppy how to calmly greet a new person that comes to the house. One quick thing to note before you continue: this won’t happen overnight! You will need to build up to this through consistent practice!
Now, here’s how to get your puppy to become an adult dog that remains calm and reserved when meeting people versus jumping up or barking!
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The biggest mistake people are guilty of when greeting a puppy: too much energy!
This is hard of course when confronted with an adorable twelve-week-old puppy. Baby voices and enthusiasm are often the default reactions. Our recommendation when meeting new people: prep your guests first! Let them know that you are training your puppy to be calm when people come over and instead of immediately reaching down to greet your puppy, give your puppy a little time to settle.
In our recent blog about introducing children and puppies, we recommend teaching kids to act like trees! Stay still, calm, and don’t show the puppy high energy. The same goes for guests coming over! If your puppy is excited and jumping, or barking, for example, receiving immediate attention is actually reinforcing that behavior, teaching your puppy that jumping and barking are acceptable. Instruct your guests to approach your puppy in a calm manner, and if your puppy starts to jump or bark at them, instead of reacting towards that behavior, stand straight and remain still or even ignore your puppy until they settle down. At that point, your guest can approach your puppy, helping to reinforce that calmer behavior is acceptable and receives affection. Remember, it can take several minutes for an excited puppy to calm down, so don’t rush the process!
Doorbells and Knocking at the Door
The Puppy Academy student, Cooper!
We’re going to help you with a simple but effective exercise that you can work on with your puppy. Since you’ll be answering a doorbell or knock when someone comes over, having a partner to help out with this training exercise will be very helpful! If you know you have a guest that day, ask them to help you before they arrive!
Ask your puppy to go to their “Place” and then ask for a “Sit” or “Down”, and “Stay”. If your puppy is still learning their commands, and working on impulse control from jumping off their place, keep your puppy on a leash for this exercise.
You’ll be working on your puppy’s reaction to the doorbell or knocking at the door by managing your own behavior. Instead of immediately getting up to answer the door, pause for a moment. This will help your puppy by seeing you not react to the noise, and remaining calm. It will also reinforce the “Sit” or “Down” and “Stay” commands you’ve given your puppy, and their initial impulse to run to the door. Keep your focus on your puppy, and try to retain their focus on you. If your puppy is remaining on their Place, mark that correct behavior with “Good!” and reward them with food. You may need to bring out high-value rewards for these exercises!
Slowly, while still keeping your energy low, take a few steps toward the door. The goal of this slow progress is to reinforce your puppy’s “Stay” and reward them. When you do finally answer the door, remain with the same level of energy---low and calm. Ask your guest to not immediately greet your puppy, but rather just walk in and ignore your puppy until you say it’s okay to greet them.
Pro tip: If you do have a very enthusiastic puppy that may not be able to hold their “Stay” for very long just yet, use yourself as a barrier between your puppy and the door. In doing so, you can step in to regain your puppy’s focus on you and redirect them onto their “Place”.
The Calm Greeting
@breadloafkoda
At this point, if your puppy has been calm and focused on you, give them the “Break” release so they can greet your guest. Again, let your guest know to keep their own energy low, pet your puppy on the chest, and even kneel down to pet your puppy to reinforce that jumping up isn’t the reaction you want.
With your puppy on leash and food in hand, let your puppy go up to the guest to greet them. If they do start to jump, revert back to quick food work to get their energy focused away from jumping up on your guest. Ask your puppy to “Come” for food, and go to their “Place” and even “Sit”. Chances are you might have to do this in the beginning a few times so we recommend that you keep your puppy on leash when meeting guests to help you redirect their behavior with leash guidance.
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Troubleshooting if your puppy starts to get excited!
These are puppies we’re dealing with after all and little hiccups are inevitable when teaching impulse control. If your puppy starts to get excited even if you and your guest are remaining calm, work with your guest to gain your puppy’s focus. Food work helps in this situation. Tell your guest to ask your puppy for a “Sit” or “Down” and maybe even “Place” and use a yummy high-value treat for them to capture your pup’s attention and reward them with it. . What this creates is leadership and working relationship, not just a fun and new playmate.
What to do if you have a high-energy guest!
We all have a family member or friend that just has a lot of high energy and is really looking forward to meeting your new puppy! Chances are they will be the one that your puppy immediately jumps up on for extra affection. First and foremost, think ahead of time! Prep your guest to try and keep their energy level to a minimum if possible when they first come to your home. And if that doesn’t go as planned, which let’s face it, with puppies not everything goes according to plan, don’t correct or try to redirect your puppy.
Not all guest visits will be the right training scenario. If you know that you can’t work with them on the calm greeting exercise, the best thing to do is to keep your puppy in their crate or play pen when someone is coming over. Correcting your puppy won’t teach them but might potentially create a negative correlation between guests arriving and being corrected. And without your puppy’s attention or your guest’s cooperation, redirecting won’t help in this situation. With the crate, you can keep your puppy put while they settle down enough to come out and then greet your guest.
Now that you have a calm greeting exercise to work on, think of which family members or friends to enlist to help you train your puppy the calm greeting! Remember to prepare your guests ahead of time to remain as calm as possible, and ignore your puppy’s excited behaviors. As your puppy begins to get better at staying calmer, start to create more of a challenge to work through by having some higher energy guests come for a visit!
We’d love to know if this helped you! Leave us a comment below. Also, join us live on Instagram @thepuppyacademy for Q&As each Wednesday at 1 pm PT! Ask our trainers anything puppy behavior and training related for free advice!
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