I think like everyone here, I’m excited (dare say giddy) to see you go from having cute puppies to CGDs and in such a short time. Thanks to your hard and consistent work your homestead seems to be a real success story.
In regards to the jumping up, the dog jumping up on you can be interrupted as a dominance display and I’m sure it often is but, it can also be part of play or a ploy for attention. You would know best your dog as to what the jumping up means. Either way, it’s probably a behavior that would be good to curb. I get to deal with a fair amount of dogs jumping up on me when I volunteer at an animal shelter once a week. It seems that the first thing many dogs need to do is jump up on me to assert/determine dominance. My immediate and consistent reaction establishes the balance of power. The adult dogs usually test me a few times. If I’m consistent with corrections, they settle down and respect me. The puppies are puppies and jump up mostly in play but also to see if they’re on top yet (puppies are dorks if you ask me). I use a few techniques depending on the situation as corrections.
The first technique is what seems to be universally taught as the right response. Basically you deny the dog the satisfaction of the jumping up by turning to the side (90 degrees) as the dog jumps up and ignore them. It might sound odd but, if works. The dog really wants to be in front of you when they jump up and they want your attention.
The second technique I use happens because I wasn’t paying attention and the dog ends up on me. In that situation I knee the dog in the chest with a quick, startling move. I equate the move to the action of a more dominant dog reprimanding a lower ranked dog; just a quick, sharp snap. This almost always gets the dog off of you.
The third technique I use I can’t not actually recommend. Basically, I use a little martial arts on the dog. Sometimes this turns into play which is ok if dog is well behaved. Sometimes the dog learns that after a few years of Aikido, I’m better than him at this and decides that jumping up is not a good idea. Either way, I win.
Typically, I end up using a combination these techniques during the initial encounter with the new dog; one of them is bound to work. After as few attempts at jumping up, most of the dogs stop. I doubt if they are cured of jumping up on people but, for the next 10 minutes, they stop the behavior with me.
The last technique is one we use at home. We’ve actually taught our alpha male to jumping up on command. He always liked to jump up and to do the Aikido move with me in play. But, you really don’t want a dog to be constantly jump up on you. It turns out that a good way to teach when and where we can jump up is to teach the action as a command and make it a game. This way when he wants to jump up (outside of play time) he knows that the command wasn’t given and it’s not play time. He still does a little half jump and play bark to see if we will play with him when he’s excited but, a sharp NO tells him that now is not the time.
I realize that one of your major concerns is a large Pyr jumping up on kids and grandparents and strangers. I believe that dogs learn situations more then they learn rules. So, you may need to enlist friends that don’t visit very often into the training. The humans involved need to understand what they’re response needs to be and the dogs needs will need to be training every so often (like every time someone new comes to the farm) to learn that when people come over we don’t jump up.
So, what’s the martial arts move I use? It’s simple, as they rear up, my hand comes from outside to the back side of their head and I kind of swat them down and off to my other side (across your body). For what every reason, they’re surprised by this every time. There are some other more involved moves but, I’ll save those for my upcoming book, “Dog Aikido”.
Jim
Glad you found the site! Thanks for the post, it's always good to hear from Pyr owners who have BTDT.
