Dogs greet face to face. A puppy that jumps at a human face is doing something entirely normal in dog terms, and it is charming at eight kilos and a problem at thirty, particularly in a lift, on a narrow pavement, or when the person being greeted is elderly or carrying a child.
It is also one of the easiest habits to fix, and one of the most commonly botched, because households treat it as a discipline question rather than as a training question.
Why it persists
Because it works. The dog jumps, the human looks down, speaks, pushes it away or steps back. All of that is attention, and to an excited dog, being pushed is a game.
Then somebody in the household says they do not mind. That single exception teaches the dog that jumping sometimes pays, and intermittent reward is the most durable pattern there is. It is the reason this habit survives years of half-hearted correction.
You are not teaching the dog to stop jumping. You are teaching it what to do instead, and paying that far better than jumping ever paid.
The method
1. Remove the reward
When four feet leave the floor, all attention stops: no eye contact, no speech, no touch. Turn away or step back through a door. The instant the feet are down, attention returns, warmly.
Expect it to get briefly worse. A behaviour that has always worked gets tried harder before it is abandoned, and that burst is the moment most households give in.
2. Pay the alternative
Decide what the dog should do instead: sit, four on the floor, or go to a mat. Train it away from greetings first, in a quiet room, then at low intensity: you walking in from another room, then from the front door, then with a family member, then with a visitor.
Pay the alternative generously in the early weeks, with food delivered low, at the dog's level, which also keeps its weight on the floor.
3. Manage the situations you cannot train yet
A lead, a gate or a closed door during the first minutes of a visit prevents a dozen failed repetitions. A dog behind a gate with a chew while guests come in is not being excluded, it is being set up to succeed.
Arrivals, which are the hardest part
Come in calmly and ignore the dog for the first thirty seconds. Hang up your coat, put your bag down, then greet the dog once it has settled. This feels unkind for about a week and it lowers the temperature of the entire event.
For a dog that has learned to explode at the door, the sequence is: dog on a mat or behind a gate, quiet entry, wait for four feet and a still body, then attention. Every single time, by everyone.
Visitors and strangers in the street
Tell people what to do rather than apologising afterwards: please ignore her until she sits. Most people comply happily when given a clear instruction, and the ones who insist that they do not mind can be told, politely, that you do.
In the street, keep the lead short when someone approaches and reward the dog for keeping its feet down. A dog that jumps at a stranger in Luxembourg City is not only impolite: knocking over a child or an elderly person is precisely the situation your compulsory civil liability insurance exists for, and it is far better avoided.
What not to do
- Kneeing the dog in the chest, standing on paws or squeezing them. These are old advice, they hurt, and they teach a dog that approaching people is unpleasant
- Shouting "down", which most dogs hear as excitement, and which also confuses the cue if you use "down" for lying down
- Pushing the dog away, which is physical contact and therefore a reward
- Correcting sometimes and laughing other times, which is the pattern that makes this last for years
Special cases
The dog that jumps at strangers in excitement needs distance and management while you train, not more exposure.
The dog that jumps and mouths together, particularly an adolescent, is usually over-aroused: shorter, calmer greetings, more rest, and an outlet earlier in the day.
The dog that jumps only at one person has been trained by that person, kindly and unintentionally. Solve it there.
A dog that jumps while barking, with a stiff body and a hard stare, is not greeting. That is a different problem and needs a professional assessment rather than a greeting protocol.
The timeline, and the household agreement
Most dogs improve noticeably in two to three weeks and are reliable in six to eight, provided the rule is absolute. Write it on the same sheet as the cue words: nobody greets a dog with its feet off the floor, including guests, including children, including the person who says they do not mind.
Tell your walker or sitter too. Forty-five minutes a day with somebody who allows jumping at the door is enough to keep the habit alive, and in a building with neighbours the door is exactly where you want the dog to be boring.
General information for dog owners in Luxembourg, not veterinary or legal advice. For your own dog, ask your vet, a qualified behaviourist or your commune. How this journal is written and checked.
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Every full episode sets the training back, which is why management comes before anything else.
Cues in a multilingual household
Three words for one behaviour is three times the work, and the dog is not being difficult.
A twelve-week training plan for a new dog
If the dog fails twice in a row, the exercise was too hard. Go back a stage.
