- Hyperventilate
- 8 years ago
- Wedding: December 2012
I suggest teaching your dog “leave it” (Leave it orders the dog to disengage from a person/place/thing.)
It’s pretty easy to teach, too.
Start off with a treat on the floor. PUT YOUR FOOT ON IT (This is important. You are claiming ownership of the treat.) Tell the dog to leave it and remove your foot.
If the dog takes the treat, immediately remove the treat from the dog’s mouth, tell the dog “Wrong” (sternly, not angrily) and put the treat back down and repeat the process. When the dog successfully leaves it and doesn’t touch the treat, pick the treat up, hold it to your chest and say “Share.” Then give the treat to the dog, rewarding them verbally.
This is just the foundation. Once you master leave it with an object, you can move on to persons and places.
Take your dog for a walk and wait for them to get interested in something (A neighbor’s cat, a spot where another dog peed, something rolling across the street, a noisy child, etc) and tell the dog to leave it. If the dog does not turn their attention to you, tell them “Wrong” and lure their attention to you with a treat.
Eventually, the dog will take “leave it” as “I better look at mom now.”
It won’t be a short process, but it’s relatively easy if you can concrete the foundation of “leave it” in your dog’s brain. My dog took two and a half weeks to learn to leave it. Now, if I throw a treat on the floor, tell him to leave it, I can walk out of the room and come back and it’s still there.
Once the dog gets it down, you can tell them to leave it when people come over. If the dog doesn’t respond (Excitement does that sometimes), the dog goes in time out for 15 minutes (Not in a kennel, not someplace they call “home” or “safe” like a crate. Try a garage or on a patio or a balcony or something) and then try again.
Best luck to you… my dog is hyperactive and over-friendly. Leave it worked wonders for us.
ETA: “off” is good for jumping. Start little by teaching your dog to get off their bed, or off the couch. Put the dog on the bed/couch and tell them off. If they get off, they get rewarded. Same with jumping. If the dog is jumping, tell them off. If they sit/get off, they get rewarded.