Right help to puppy owner?

Was walking Parker in the woods today (Cherry is in Newmarket having her cataract operated on tomorrow) and met a lady I recognised from an old agility club with her 2 Golden Retrievers. One was elderly but the other one was a large puppy.

The puppy kept jumping up at me and I said no and pushed it gently away but it kept doing it. The owner asked me to hit it on the nose next time it jumped up as she was having a problem with it keeping jumping up at other people on its walks.

I wasn't happy about hitting someone's puppy as it seemed cruel and may make it fearful of other people so I said "I don't want to hit your puppy but I have a pet corrector spray and that may work?" I showed the owner the spray and she thought it was a good idea and when the dog jumped up me I said "NO" and sprayed near it. The dog then calmed down and sat and the owner gave it a treat.

She said she thought it was really helpful and was going to buy one and set people up as stooges to deter her dog from jumping up. I said I knew some people with a Lab that they had to keep on a lead all the time as it jumped up people and I thought it was a shame to keep a dog leashed like this when you could probably train it to stop this behaviour.

The dog was not frightened by me and came for a fuss and a treat (which I gave it for sitting).

Do you think this was ok as I have never had a problem with my dogs jumping up people (apart from when I trained Parker to do it in heelwork to music classes and he then jumped up another dog owner on the heath! I stopped doing that move afterwards) I thought it was a better option than her telling other people to hit this poor puppy!

I have never had a puppy but I personally thought that if I had this problem I would keep the dog on a long line/lead to stop it doing this behaviour and reward it for doing something else like a sit but the owner said she didn't want to keep it on a lead.

IMO this is just puppy behaviour ~ normal & natural, if often unwelcome! I completely appreciate that the owner wants her puppy to stop jumping up & that other people don't want it planting muddy pawprints all over them. But unless the behaviour is rewarded regularly, the chances are that the puppy will grow out of it anyway.

Funnily enough I met a lady a while ago with a border terrier pup. It came racing over to me & my dogs & jumped all over me & the dogs. My dogs are fine with this (luckily) & I was in mud-splashed dog-walking gear, so no harm done. But the owner rushed over with a can of pet corrector spray & was about to squirt the puppy for jumping up at me. I said please don't, I don't mind, I can ignore the puppy. She said that several peple she'd met on this particular walk had been very rude & cross about her pup jumping up & she was embarrassed but wanted the puppy to have off lead time. So she resorted to using the pet corrector spray in an attempt to stop the jumping up.

The pet corrector spray is an aversive, a punishment & most dogs obviously don't like it. But for it to be used effectively it HAS to be administered at the EXACT time that the pup jumps up, preferably EVERY time. Now with an off lead pup running up to strangers, the pup has usually jumped up 3 or 4 times, run round in several circles, done a bit of sniffing & said hello to a couple of dogs by the time the owner catches up with her puppy & sprays it. Can you see what I'm getting at? How on earth is this going to teach the puppy that jumping up is wrong?

There is a danger that, if the puppy is scared by the spray, that it will make an association between meeting people & the spray, meeting other dogs & the spray, that particular location & the spray, the owner rushing over shouting & the spray. But will it make the association between jumping up & the spray? In that scenario, I very much doubt it!

With the lady I met, I showed her in 5 minutes, how to get the puppy to sit for a treat. I told her about setting up introductions with friends & family to reinforce this behaviour with other people, in different locations. I told her how to train a sit for a greeting at home. I asked to ensure that NO attention is given by any member of the family (including the children) for jumping up.

IMO this is better than resorting to a punishment in the form of pet corrector spray, when so many things could go wrong, or that it could completely fail to address the issue anyway.

I know from your other posts, that you carry pet corrector spray to keep other dogs away from your dogs. I don't have a problem with this ~ if it works for you, then fine. But I would think twice about recommending using a spray to someone else in the circumstances you mentioned.

This is a common problem, to do with perception rather than reality.

Owners often complain that their dogs jump up at people and want advice about this, when really and truly the problem starts before they have the opportunity to jump up at people as of course if they had ANY control over the dog and had a recall and/or down command the problem could not actually exist!

I teach owners that before expecting dogs not to jump up at people outside that they need to a) prevent them from rehearsing this behaviour b) teach recall c) teach 4 paws on the ground, the latter two need to be perfected indoors before generalisation.

If dogs will not do it at home, they are not going to do it outside!

Hitting a dog whether with a hand, an object or kneeing them in the chest can, at best just encourage the behaviour (as any attention is better than none and dogs often invite play by body slamming etc) and at worst make sensitive dogs hand/owner shy, not something you want to engender into the relationship.

Saying "no" is also pointless unless a) the dog understand it and really for me the words "no", "wait" and "stay" are pointless as they are abstract terms which do not give a dog sufficient information etc, (but that is another thread) and often owners spend their life saying "no" until the dog thinks that is his name, rather than giving dogs something positive to do.

I also find it rather irresponsible and lazy of owners who expect other people to do their dog training for them, when they are too lazy to do it themselves!

The other risk this lady takes is that if a dog does this to a frail/old/post/frightened person it could cause them an injury and/or if it chooses the wrong person to jump up at it could be punished far harder than the owner planned and thus affects its relationship with strangers!

One of the issues with a pet corrector is again it does not teach the dog anything positive and it can be hard for people to operate with gloves, more than one dog etc etc.

I`m afraid I don`t agree with your advice. I wouldn`t want a dog to learn strangers are a threat.
A far better way to deal with this is to teach the dog a sit and greet. With the dog on lead, enlist the help of passing strangers. Put your dog in a sit in front of the stranger. Give the dog a reward. If the stranger is dog-savvy, they give the treat. The dog NEVER gets the reward if the bum isn`t planted firmly on the ground.
And teach recall.

Great thread!

Im sure everyone will have their own view on this but what will be very interesting is the actual RESULT. If you run into that person again, can you ask how they thought it was going and wether their approach worked in changing the behaviour of the puppy.

Personally I dont think one aversive experience will have harmed the puppy in any way, and who knows if it will have helped. I think mostly it depends other factors liek the sensitivity and determination of the puppy character in question as well as the number of incidents which counter the one with the corrector spray. Personally, I try to avoid corrector sprays as usually I can communicate my wishes quite easily to most dogs, but not everyone can. And if for those that use them, they do find they work, Id fro one would like to hear about it. Thank you for starting the thread.

That's exactly what I would have said to her BUT she won't keep the dog leashed!! Especially in this slippery weather conditions I would be worried this dog would knock someone over as it was quite a large puppy and came into me at force.

I never see her usually-it was just someone I remembered from training classes and I was worried that she would get other dog owners to actually hit this poor puppy on the head and it would then get a fear of strangers. The pet corrector was a better option though I agree with what you are saying.

Thank you for your positive comments-I am not a fan on using aversives on my own dogs-I was wrongly advised to shake Cherry by the scruff of the neck when she got reactive when other dogs were nearby by a dog trainer and that had dire results as you can imagine!

I do carry the pet corrector as we have a problem (even in supposedly "on-lead" parks) where people let their dogs charge up to my on-lead bitch who is nervous of other dogs as her sight is poor. When you don't know the other dog and the owner is a football field away (as is usually the case!) I would rather use this then Cherry knows she is protected and doesn't "kick off".

I just remembered that the pet corrector instructions had a bit on about using it to stop jumping up. As I comment above-better option than getting other dog owners to hit this poor puupy-couldn't believe she asked me to do this. It wasn't at all "bothered/upset" in any way by the noise but it did stop and sit then it got a treat.

There is nothing that consistently has the same effect on every dog, every time - if only training were that straight forward.

To some dogs the pet corrector would be scarey and frightening, with the risk of misplaced associations being formed.

To others it would be a useful interruptive distractor, giving a pause in the unwanted behaviour and so an opportunity to "insert" or substitute, the alternative required behaviour, which then also gives an opportunity to reward this preferred behaviour- this would be the preferable outcome.

Sometimes you need an effective interrupter of the excited, disruptive behaviour (which can be highly self rewarding) to give you a chance to show the dog the response you do want.

With other dogs this same pet corrector may have no effect whatsoever and so be totally ineffective.

More concerningly it could arouse or excite the dog, or even trigger aggression which is why every method always needs to be done on an individual basis.

IME there is no one method, technique or approach that suits all dogs in all situations, nor are there many things that are either always rewarding, or always aversive, to all dogs in all situations e.g negative attention can be regarded by some dogs as better than being ignored and others go into play mode in response to it.

It would seem that at this time, with this dog, in this situation, it worked out well, but it cannot safely be assumed that that result would always be the outcome in every case.

I do think it is for the owner of a dog, who is presumably the person who knows that individual best, to train their dog, not for them to expect the General Public to be inclined, or able, even with instruction, to do so for them.

However I would not be happy for someone to be using a spray to stop their dog jumping up at me when I was with a dog myself in case it worried the blameless dog with me at the time due to the noise - one reason I dislike spray collars as they also "correct" any other blameless dog in the close vicinity of the collar-wearing dog.

I certainly would not be inclined to hit someone's dog just because they asked me to do so, any more than I would hit their children if they asked- although I might be more tempted then

Interesting. I have to admit although Akira doesn't jump up randomly on walks she might if someone is fussing her and certainly does to my parents when they come through the door and it is something I'd ideally like to have sorted though it is normal for a young dog I reckon. We tried the turning away thing, then arms crossed but she just bounces off the other side. OH was keen to try the putting the knee up thing and that seemed to work as now she doesn't generally jump up to us but burns off initial greeting excitment by running around.

Now I try to get her sit or do a down when parents first come in ready to give reward but so far it is a real struggle keeping her bum on the ground. Plus in a sit she has the opportunity to get her paws up in the air and starts bashing so the down is better! She is generally very good at holding sits or downs round the house but she clearly loves my parents more than her treats. Not sure about ignoring her as in that situation she still jumps so obviously gets something out of doing that one way or another - it's also hard with a stranger if she is being fussed and then suddenly jumps. I don't think I'd want to use a pet corrector on the basis that the behaviour isn't problematic enough to me really to warrant that - it's only parents plus the odd person who fusses her on a walk who have her try and jump up, I guess if I was in this other lady's position I'd be happy to go it a go though and it is less harmful than bashing the dog one.

With some dogs in this situation it can help to encourage them to carry something in their mouths, so they can run about with that, on four legs, as a displacement outlet for the excitement of people arriving, rather than jumping up at people, - less easy to do this outside though