One of the most common training challenges you will face when raising a puppy is teaching appropriate greeting behavior. Socializing the puppy can be a balancing act. People will stop you and want to pet the puppy. Coworkers, friends, and strangers alike will want to interact with the puppy. However, it is your job to make sure that the puppy does not get overwhelmed, behaves appropriately, and also is rewarded for keeping attention on you.
Here is where it often goes awry:
- People tend to greet puppies in a very intense way. They mean well, but even the dog savviest among us (myself included) can lose our minds when we see an adorable puppy. If a puppy is tired, sensitive, or cranky, a cooing and adoring stranger is often the last thing he wants to interact with.
- When a puppy experiences a spike in arousal, it is very difficult for him to think clearly. What causes arousal? Eye contact and a high-pitched voice from a stranger. Add the pressure of trying to enforce a “sit at heel” and you have a recipe for poor greeting behavior (jumping, mouthing, submissive urination, etc).
- Leashes add tension and limit a dog’s options. For one, opposition reflex often comes into play: if the dog is at the end of the leash, they pull harder against it by default (resulting in jumping, lunging, etc). It also removes the option of flight if the puppy is unsure or hesitant about the stranger.
This month’s video with Idunn is a demonstration of body language, as well as strategies to deal with it. Idunn is now full-on teething, and is displaying sensitivity with people. She appears to love people, but she can be a jumper, has had a few episodes of submissive/excitement urination, and she can get overwhelmed by groups of people.
Growing Up Idunn - Greeting behaviors from Southeastern Guide Dogs on Vimeo.
The first two segments of the video show Idunn’s arousal during a high-pitched, energetic greeting from a “stranger” (thanks to my decoy Katie). In this case, Idunn is demonstrating her arousal and internal conflict by lowering her body to the ground, tucking her (wagging) tail, and pinning her ears back. Notice how at 7 seconds in, she runs up to meet Katie, while also compressing her body and shrinking to the ground. She is not unhappy to be with Katie, but she is definitely experiencing conflict. At 10 seconds, she is leaning into her, but I wouldn’t call her “recovered” or “doing fine”. How do I know that? Because she has, over the last several weeks, demonstrated a consistent pattern of behavior (compression, urination, etc) that lets us know she is not doing “fine”. I want her to gain confidence with people, instead of associating them with a feeling of being overwhelmed.
To work on this, I ask Katie to approach again quietly. At 0:19, Idunn presses her ears back and tries to approach Katie, but I call her and ask her to walk with me. Notice how Idunn jumps up on me; she is still experiencing an arousal spike from seeing Katie approach again. I just keep walking and ask Idunn to walk around Katie. At about 0:24, she starts to calm down and walk more purposefully. I tried to give her a treat at 0:27, but she’s still revved up and jumps, so we keep walking.
At 0:33, I reward her for walking nicely. She passed Katie without notice and has calmed down further. That earns a reward because that’s moving towards what I want. After some more walking, we work on sitting in heel position near Katie (but not facing her yet; most puppies are more relaxed when they don’t have eye contact with a “stranger”). I’m not looking for a perfect heel or working on hind end awareness because that’s not the focus of this exercise; I’m looking for a general heel position. The more we do this exercise, the more precise I can ask her to be.
By 1:00, Idunn is able to be near Katie and stay focused in a general heel position. I back up and ask Katie to make herself smaller. Now Katie is closer to Idunn’s eye level, which will be more challenging, but she will also be less looming and intimidating. I get an okay heel response and allow Idunn to greet a much calmer Katie. She still is wagging downward and turning her head to the side at 1:23, but she is MUCH more upright in her posture. The greeting lasts just a couple of seconds, and I call her away for a reward. This keeps the intensity low, makes a positive association to the stranger, and reinforces attention on the handler.
I ask Katie to pet Idunn’s back, which results in a small spike of arousal, but she quickly refocuses on me. We are keeping the arousal spikes low enough that she can learn. She gets rewarded for calm behavior and handler focus in front of me; once I have that, I ask for a heel.
By making this session less than 3 minutes long, I was able to keep up a high rate of reinforcement. Idunn will benefit greatly from VERY frequent set-ups of this kind of exercise, and once she starts to understand the goal behavior, the treat frequency can be decreased greatly.
What is great about set-ups is that if you work on them often enough, you have good behaviors pre-installed when you need them. Let’s say Idunn goes to the mall, and a group of excited children rush up to her. That is a potentially overwhelming, excitable situation for any dog, let alone a puppy. However, if she has a dozen of these types of training set-ups under her belt, it will be much easier to manage. I would call her attention, maybe pivot in a small circle and ask her to focus on me while the children pet her. I want Idunn to think, “Oh, this is just another one of those training exercises that we do.” That is a lot more manageable than trying to train and control a puppy only when you’re set upon by strangers. We all know how hard it is to get someone to not pet the puppy when they jump (“Oh I don’t mind, I have dogs…”). So use decoys and set-ups as much as you can, train the puppy to default to attention to you, keep the pup moving and reward him when he starts to calm down, and don’t ask for perfection too soon. Ask for effort and move towards the final picture that you want.
