Jumping at home
There are several ways to use collar pressure response to your advantage. If the puppy is jumping on you and mouthing, gently taking a hold of the collar (or put him on a short leash) and redirecting the puppy into a SIT will often calm him down greatly. If the puppy jumps, keep pressure downward to prevent the puppy from being able to continue leaping wildly. The goal is not to force him into a position, but rather to limit his movements to keep him from continuing to escalate.
When you first start working on this, go get a treat or toy reward once the puppy SITs. Many puppies who jump are overexcited or overstimulated, and trying to use praise as a reward often will rev him right back up again. By contrast, if you walk over to the cabinet to get the dog a treat after he SITs, he is focused on the possibility of a reward, rather than continuing to leap for attention.
There are many ways to raise the bar to continue to calm him further. You can tell him to SIT and then STAY; he has to hold his STAY until you return to him with the treat. This is tough and will take a lot of practice. Do not correct the dog when he gets up; simply bring him back to the original position and try the STAY again.
Other puppies may benefit from a game of fetch as a reward. Get a Kong as a reward and toss it a few times. This will help expel some energy as the dog moves away from you to chase the toy (rather than leaping back up on you wildly).
Jumping on strangers
One of the best parts about collar pressure is that it helps with management. There are situations that you may find yourself in where the puppy starts jumping or lunging on the leash before you have a chance to react or redirect him. Dogs with a history of collar pressure protocol recover attention on the handler MUCH faster than dogs who haven’t.
If you have a jumping dog, set him up in a SIT in heel position with a loose but short leash. Have a “stranger” come up towards you and the puppy. When the puppy jumps, hold onto the leash so the puppy cannot reach the stranger. The stranger should just stand there and ignore the puppy. When the pup checks back in with you, reward him! Then ask him to HEEL again. Keep working on this until he is more focused on you than the stranger. The "stranger" can gradually become more exciting, depending on how the puppy is handling it. The goal is NOT to make the puppy jump and set him up for failure; the goal with set-ups is to present a less challenging version of the distraction and manage the puppy's bursts of arousal. If the puppy pulls towards the stranger and appears to be "revving up", that is pre-jumping behavior and is an excellent place to start.
The more set-ups like this you can do, the easier it will be to manage the puppy around distractions. We are not expecting the puppy to never jump; what we are looking to do is to reduce the frequency and the persistence. Very persistent jumpers are annoying at best and unsafe at worst. They will often keep jumping in spite of corrections. Working with collar pressure is a very effective way to teach an alternative behavior.
The key here is to work on set ups frequently, rather than waiting for a “real life” situation to try to train. Often, in “real life” situations, the dog gets over his threshold too quickly and is too revved up to focus on the handler. Start with lower-intensity distractions and build up to more excited, “crazy person” greetings.
Another option is to have the dog facing you for greetings, rather than the stranger. Encourage the stranger to calmly pet the dog on his back, rather than getting in the dog’s face or petting him on the head. You can reward the dog for paying attention to you, and he will not have the social pressure of a stranger in his face. If he jumps, he will have to turn away from you to do it, so you have an extra half a second to shorten the leash and take a step away from the stranger; the dog will reach the end of the leash and self-correct, plus have a chance to re-engage with you and get set up in the proper position again.
Finally, a third option would be to practice passing by a friendly stranger. Warm up with some loose leash walking, then have the “stranger” pass by you and talk to or reach out for the puppy. Do not stop moving; keep the puppy with you using pressure on the leash, and reward him when he re-engages with you. As he gets the idea of the exercise, only reward him when he sticks with you instead of trying to socialize with the stranger. For some dogs, keeping moving past a stranger makes it easier for them to be successful in choosing not to jump, rather than remaining stationary for a greeting.
In this month's video, I work the three techniques with Idunn and a friendly stranger. The stranger is able to progress to a high pitched, typical "excited greeter" squealing voice. She stays far enough away though that Idunn does NOT jump. Idunn is excited, but makes good choices and is rewarded for these. It becomes increasingly difficult to distract her. With some dogs, we may not have progressed to having the stranger use an excited voice in a single session, but Idunn has had a lot of foundation work and is showing good understanding of the training game.
Growing up Idunn - jumping from Southeastern Guide Dogs on Vimeo.
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