Pleased to meet you - sympathy for the visitor
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During training classes, here at Positive Dog Training, we often talk to clients about how the family dog meets and greet people who visit your home. A polite greeting can make all the difference to a stress-free evening with friends or a downhearted night apologising again and again for Fidos enthusiastic jump onto them as soon as they walked in the door!
While most of us dog people do not mind some hair and drool on our clothing and we all secretly loved the happy dance of arrival our beautiful dogs give us when we get home every day, there are many reasons why, from a safety and point of view, it’s a good idea to work with your dogs and train them as to how you would like them to behave when people call in.
The bark – 2 types of barking can come into play in this instance. One we would call alert barking, when in the dog is barking to let you know that they have seen or heard something that is out of the ordinary and the second is we would call excitable barking, where in the dog is vocalising its excitement at something that is about to happen.
Lets set the scene
The doorbell ring and the dog goes bananas, what happens next? What does your dog see and hear, does it all become a great fun game? You jump up from where ever you are and begin chastising the dog, maybe try to move him out of the hallway and into another room, or maybe you hold them back by the collar as they twist and turn and try and greet your guest?
It really doesn’t have to be this way and with a little time, some treats and the wish to work to charge this behaviour you can turn chaos into calm.
Train an alternative behaviour and set your dog up for success:
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