How to stop a dog from jumping up without punishment: why kneeing and pushing away do not work
Jumping up is natural greeting behavior. Dogs greet each other at the face, and because we walk on two legs our faces are high up, so your dog comes up to reach them. At Stressless Dogs we therefore do not address it with a correction but with understanding, management and your own body language. A knee or a push does not just backfire, it can injure your dog.
In short
Jumping up has nothing to do with dominance. It is about closeness, greeting and social behavior.
Usually we taught it ourselves, during puppyhood, by finding it cute and giving attention to it.
Arousal is hormonally the same as stress. An aroused dog cannot think, so training in the moment itself is pointless.
Kneeing a dog is dangerous: crooked neck vertebrae, bruising, or your dog falling backward onto his back.
Eye contact, touch and talking all work as encouragement, including angry talking. Negative attention is attention too.
What your body says decides whether your dog comes up or not. You learn to read and use that language in the free webinar.
Is my dog being dominant when he jumps up?
No. That idea comes from research in the 1950s and 1960s on wolves, which produced the picture of a rank order with an alpha who claims his place through conflict. Every rule you still hear comes from there: you eat first, you go through the door first, the dog stays off the couch.
The problem is that this research did not look at wolves in the wild, but at wolves in captivity who had been put together as strangers in a small space. That is about as representative as studying people in a refugee shelter. The researcher himself walked it back in 1999, but by then the damage was done.
Dogs live in families and are in fact conflict avoiding animals. They are not busy with a constant struggle to climb in rank. Licking the corners of your mouth, which many people read as submission, is ritualized behavior: puppies lick their mother’s mouth corners to get her to bring up food, and in adult dogs it has become a form of reconciliation or friendship.
So why does he do it?
Three reasons, and they overlap.
First, greeting. Dogs have scent glands between the pads of their paws, near the anus and behind the ears, and they want to smell those to get to know each other. That gland behind the ears is one of the reasons they greet each other at the face. A small dog or a puppy jumps up a little to be able to reach.
Second, play. In social interaction with other dogs, jumping up is simply part of play for many dogs, often with a lot of arousal attached.
Third, we reinforced it. The pattern is almost always the same. The puppy jumps up during a greeting, we find it cute, and we talk to him, pet him or pick him up. So he gets rewarded over and over for his natural behavior. An eleven pound (5 kg) puppy jumping up is not a problem. The same dog at sixty-six pounds (30 kg) suddenly is, and by then it has been normal to him for years. The fact that it is no longer allowed is confusing.
How hard he jumps depends on the emotion underneath: joy and arousal, but sometimes also fear or seeking support. The more arousal, the more exaggerated the greeting.
What should I definitely not do?
What many people do | Why it does not work |
|---|---|
Saying “off” while he is already jumping | Your dog links the word to what he is doing at that moment. So you are teaching him that “off” means paws in the air |
Getting angry and correcting | It adds tension, and a dog with more tension in his body controls his impulses worse, not better. You become unpredictable to him |
Pushing him away | Invites counter pressure, adds energy so he needs longer to calm down, and can make him fall backward |
Kneeing him | Can land in the wrong place: crooked neck vertebrae, bruising, or your dog falling onto his back. An absolute no go |
Eye contact, touch or talking during the jump | All three are attention, and attention reinforces. Angry talking included, because some dogs happily take negative attention |
Training while visitors are coming in | His limbic system is on and his prefrontal cortex is off. Those two cannot be on at the same time. He cannot learn anything in that moment |
In summary: do not say “off” while he is already jumping but teach the word separately, do not get angry, do not push him away and never use a knee, because that can cause neck injuries and bruising. Do not look at him, touch him or talk to him during the jump, not even angrily, because all three are attention. And do not try to teach anything in the moment it goes wrong: an aroused dog cannot think. Do not train in the moment, train for the moment.
So how do you prevent it?
You set the situation up so that jumping up does not happen. A few things that work right away:
Build in an intermediate step. Put your dog in another room or behind a gate when someone comes in. Brief your visitors, let them sit down calmly, and only then bring your dog in. The arousal that visitors carry with them has already settled by that point.
Put him on leash for a moment, inside or out, so he cannot run at anyone and you can let him greet calmly.
Toss a few pieces of kibble on the floor as someone comes in. Sniffing is relaxing and brings him physically down at the same time: nose to the ground, four paws on the floor.
Give him something to hold. Something in his mouth brings relief and helps him calm down, because he literally feels where his muzzle ends. Sometimes that is the whole difference.
Crouch down yourself. He jumps because your face is high up. Make yourself small, and jumping is no longer necessary.
Brief your visitors from the front door. A note on the door works surprisingly well: they read the instructions, and you get a moment to guide your dog to the other room or behind the gate.
If your dog has learned over years that jumping up pays off, prevention alone is not enough and you also have to redirect it. You do that not with a correction but with your body: showing a loose, open palm from underneath (it is not a stop signal), turning your body away, and turning with him if he walks around you. After that you teach the alternative, with a separate word for four paws on the floor, at a calm moment and not during a greeting.
From our practice
The most common question we get about jumping up is still whether the dog is being dominant or trying to be the boss. The answer is no, and for many people that is a relief: it takes the fight out of the situation. More than 30,000 dog parents have taken a Stressless Dogs course, and this is one of the first things that changes.
Be realistic about the outcome. Jumping up does not disappear a hundred percent, and it does not have to. In an unguarded moment or with a lot of emotion it simply happens, and that is part of it. What does change: you understand why he does it, you can prevent and redirect most of it, and you stop getting irritated when it does happen. That acceptance alone is often a big improvement for your relationship. Digging, barking, rolling in smelly things and jumping up are natural behavior. Unwanted for us, completely normal for a dog.
One important condition: being consistent goes for everyone. You, the kids, and your visitors too.
When to get help
If your dog jumps up so hard that it creates a risk for children or older people, management is not a luxury but a necessity: use gates and let him greet on leash until you are further along. If the jumping comes with snapping, growling or biting, or if you see the arousal turn into fear, get a professional involved instead of experimenting yourself. And if your dog is suddenly much busier than he was, have your veterinarian check for pain, because physical discomfort sits underneath behavior more often than people think.
Frequently asked questions
My dog only jumps up at visitors, not at me. How is that?
Because you are always there and visitors are special. The arousal is much higher with someone unfamiliar, and it starts at the doorbell. The biggest win is the intermediate step: dog separate, visitors seated, then greet calmly together.
Does ignoring work?
As a technique to avoid reinforcing the jumping, yes, but it is not the goal. You turn your body away until the arousal is out, and then you greet normally. Ignoring your dog endlessly is no fun for either of you and solves nothing.
My puppy jumps up and I still think it is cute. Do I need to do something now?
Yes, because in puppies it is learned incredibly fast and unlearning it later takes much more time. Think about which behavior you will still enjoy from a grown dog in two years. Give attention and reward exactly when he keeps all four paws on the ground.
Sources
Mech, L.D. (1999). Alpha status, dominance, and division of labor in wolf packs. Canadian Journal of Zoology, 77, 1196-1203. The paper in which the researcher himself distances his work from the alpha idea.
Read next
Jumping up is a question, not a challenge
Your dog is asking for contact in the only way he knows, and he does it at your height because we carry our faces so high. Once you see it that way, the irritation disappears and you can start guiding calmly. Your body is your most important tool in that, not your voice and not your knee.
Want to learn what your dog shows you before he comes up, and how your own posture gives calm back? You see that in the free webinar. The whole build up from management to redirecting to alternative behavior is what the Stressless Communication Course is for.
Thank you for reading, on behalf of me and all the dogs.
Dog Behavior Consultant & Natural Dog Trainer