Find Your Personal Bubble!

Do you have a dog that jumps up on you for attention? Conventional wisdom says turn away from the dog, disengage, ignore the jumping, then click and treat when all four feet are on the floor. This works in some early cases before the jumping is very ingrained in a dog. But I have had a run of confirmed, serious, hardcore jumpers — and, for them, this old method just doesn’t cut it.

For one thing, some dogs find that you turning away from them is the funnest thing in the world! It elicits play and even more jumping.

Secondly, with a confirmed jumper, it’s hard for people to ignore the behavior  consistently until all four feet are back on the floor. Let’s face it — a big dog jumping on you can really hurt.

Worse still, super smart dogs will even start to initiate earning a treat by creating a brand new, ridiculously fun behavior chain that starts by (a) jumping up on purpose, then (b) self-correcting by putting all four feet on the floor, and (c) happily collecting their reward!

You can’t win.

But actually you CAN win! I’ve found a method to keep a dog from jumping up that is powerful, and extremely effective, but consistent with the principles I use in my training — train for what you WANT, rather than punish what you DON’T. In this case, cure jumping by training a dog to “Find Your Personal Bubble”, and stay outside of it! Credit goes to my KPA alum, Helix Fairweather, for this gem.:

Pay attention, and try to catch your dog before he even comes close enough to put paws on you (or anyone). In other words, be pro-active. As he is moving towards you, click and toss the treat in the opposite direction. Repeat. (You can initiate him moving toward you, if he’s not already heading your way, by moving away from him.) As soon as he is 2′ – 3′ away, click and treat! Soon you will see the dog start to hesitate at that location where you have been clicking him. Good! Now click the hesitation, then treat. Repeat and over time, you will see him start to slow down and pause for you. Perfect! You have just taught him the edge of your “bubble”!

As the dog pauses at this new spot well away from you, you can now ask for a sit, then a click and treat. Repeat repeat repeat repeat. Different times of day, different orientations where you are compared to him, different people (if possible), different rooms. His default behavior will be to approach you to the edge of your bubble, pause and sit or down. THAT is to be interpreted by you as “Please may I have your attention for a moment?” You can then decide to pet him, stand up and take him outside to play, say “Thanks, but I’m gonna watch cable right now,” or to toss treats to him in his kennel, or whatever.

Practice in all levels of his excitement (or non-excitement!). When people are over and he is excited, obviously, but also when he is just chilling around the house. When the dog is kind of tired or low-key so we think, “No need to practice Find the Personal Bubble now, he’s not coming in for a jump-up”. HA! That’s the perfect me to be training it!

Good luck with this!   Once your dog has the idea, it is an endlessly useful behavior that can be applied to so many situations in which you just need the dog to give something or someone some additional space.