13 Comments on “How do you keep a dog from jumping on guests? Management isn’t training; it’s a critical supplement!”

  1. Does your dog jump on guests? Well I have a solution for you!

    Avoid the problem! Lock your dog upstairs, put them on a leash around guests, and distract them with toys/treats! It is guaranteed to work until you’re in a situation you don’t have control over! 👍

    1. Forgot to mention that locking your dog in a room while guests are over is an aversion to the dog. While it may not be a physical aversion, it is definitely mental. I thought the mental state of the dog was most important? If you think it isn’t stressful for a dog to be locked up when it knows and can smell new people, think again.

      Families with kids and lives outside of dog training need quick, instant results. Especially if you have a large dog that jumps on kids. Zak lives a very bubbly life when it comes to dogs, and he seems to think it’s the same for everybody around him.
      My family owns a 100+ pound GP, and when he was a puppy he started jumping on people when excited. Unacceptable. We stuck our knee out to shove him off, and he stopped doing it. Problem fixed. And guess what? He’s not scared of us, he’s not abused, and he’s perfectly happy and healthy. Correction is natural and gives quick results. If you wanna train YOUR dog “force free” with 0 aversions, have fun. But don’t expect other people to do the same.

    2. @don’t mind me Well that’s great for you? My dog did the same, and while it did slow him down a bit he still never really cared about it if anyone held up their knee, so if you were to get a reaction from him out of that you would have to legit HURT him, which I would never do. His excitement and love for everyone is a wonderful thing, he just had to learn when and where and how to display it in acceptable ways. Yes, it’s taken more time and work than being straight up mean to him, but that’s what I signed up for when I got a dog with a lot of drive and energy and a big personality.

      Seriously, take your own advice—have fun, but don’t expect others to do the same. Do what works for you and your dogs, and let others do what works for them and theirs.

    3. The reason I’m coming after “force free” training is because Zak thinks it is the ONLY way to train a dog. That’s idiotic.
      He’s never even set foot near a bird dog, ranch dog, or police dog. And that’s because his method falls through. I left my comment to point out how ridiculous that training method is and how doesn’t make any sense in the real world (avoiding a problem isn’t fixing it and locking a dog up or holding them back with a leash is still mentally aversive)
      So yes, balanced trainers would leave force free trainers alone to do their thing if they would stop demonizing us and show us the proof in their pudding.
      I have yet to see ONE positive only trainer train a police dog, hunting dog, boar dog, nothing. Zak can teach a 12 week old golden puppy to sit, but he’s never gotten into the big leagues. He’s also a coward for refusing to defend his methods in person. Many trainers have offered him a spot on their podcast or to come train their dogs, but he refuses. He knows his method is bs and doesn’t work for high drive, challenging dogs.

    4. @don’t mind me I don’t know enough about Zak to make this personal and while I have a high drive working dog of my own he has practically zero guard instincts so has never been challenging in that way, so I won’t pretend like I can speak on that.

      I do personally believe that different things work for different dogs. The biggest thing all training should have in common in my opinion, no matter how someone approaches it, is just to not be cruel. So I do respect where you’re coming from too, even while I don’t agree with this example in particular being a bad advice for ALL dogs.

    5. no dog is the same, so this method might work for some. The problem with zak is he believes that if anyone uses aversions or punishes their dog, they’re science deniers and/or cruel to their dogs. That’s my problem.
      Aversion is not cruel to the dog, but he thinks it is. Even though he is inadvertently using it 😂

      Force free trainers are known for managing the problem, like this video suggests, instead of fixing it. So if you don’t have any issue with people kneeing their dog or shoving them off to discourage jumping, and don’t think this method is the only right way, you and I have no issue

  2. All true! We have our dog sit on the fireplace, with treats on hand until the guests have established their presence and the dog’s excitement level has subsided.

  3. What’s your strategy for managing barking/jumping/etc when you and your dogs visit someone else’s house? We usually do a quick walk break after getting out of the car before greeting the people we’re visiting and that helps.

    1. Keep a value reward just for this exercise and work on down and use a crate so that the brain and body gets timely managed breaks

  4. I was down with this guy and usually methods until I got this dog. The dog will listen to everything until she’s excited, and then she’s a 130lb devil. I don’t want to do the mean methods, so we’re just suffering

  5. I think a lot of people are struggling to understand that this management is not meant to be long term. It is to unlearn and reteach what is supposed to happen when there are visitors. It redirects and reinforces better behaviors with the goal being a well rounded individual who won’t need to be restrained or confined when visitors arrive.

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