Puppy's behavior switch

This is something I'm curious about, and I haven't found much so far. Our puppy is 13 weeks old, she is a bear dog mix.

She is playful and has lot of energy, but gets super excited with most of the people she meets... Nothing really wrong for a young puppy I suppose, but she never acts this way towards us (trying to lick our face non-stop or playing with our hair for example). I wonder how we can explain this

Also, it seems really hard to train her to calm down a bit in these situations, again most of the time (when she stays with us only) she doesn't show anything like that.

13 weeks is very young. Mine used to do that when we first got her. Here's a piccie of my dog at around that age - playing with my daughter's hair and trying to lick her face all over lol!



I remember when my Cavalier was a tiny pup she'd leap onto your lap, run up your body and SIT ON YOUR HEAD!

I dont' know what a Bear Dog Mix is but am guessing it will be a good bit bigger than either of these two - so maybe a bigger problem!

Now, how can I say this without offending you.....errrr you're boring!!

No really, it's just that you have no novelty factor to her compared to visitors. Also you have probably done lots of training with her at ignoring jumping up and other unwanted behaviours so she knows the correct behaviours to display to get your attention...but with visitors...anything goes!

@ Tang: she will definitely get bigger than Bella, one of my concern is some people may like dogs but don't feel that comfortable with hyper puppies.

@ catrinsparkles: I mucher prefer honesty to politeness, don't worry then
That being said, I hear you but don't really believe this is the key. Maybe I'm wrong.
We haven't done much of ignoring her to be honest, only when she bites too hard. We do much more of rewarding/reinforcing good behaviors.
No novelty factors compared to visitors? Sure... but like everyone else, no?

My dog goes nuts when we have visitors. She thinks they come to see HER. If she monopolises too much I put her outside. However I have always said 'if you don't like dogs - we probably won't like you!'

Yep, people definitely come to see her when it's their first time at least

You know, there are a few things that look obvious now I didn't realize before. The main one would be both of us stay pretty much all day in our cabin, especially when it's -30 like now We go for walks, go out to town... but there is always at least one of us always home, except for a very few times (4-5 hours max).

Every morning, she's happy to see me. I'm not an expert at dog's body language but there's no doubt about it! She's happy but not hyper, which is great! Maybe I made it sound worse than it is.

No I don't the you're boring but it is normal for dogs to act in a far more excited way to visitors than to their owners. ....all of my dogs have. It's why it makes it hard to train calm greeting towards strangers because everything is so exciting when visitors come.

I knew what you meant! Roger my neighbour looked after Bella for 3 weeks in Oct - she was pleased to see me on my return but ... NOWHERE NEAR AS PLEASED as she now is every time she sees Roger lol! Gawd you'd think he was her long lost beloved owner! She liked him before but goes DEMENTED now when she sees him. I'm not even in the picture!

Haha. We were walking in the forestry commission land near us today and everyone as plodding around sedately as we were nearing the end of our walk, heading down the long straight back to the car. Now I'm abolutely rubbish at distant but that straight take ten minutes or so to walk down. I spot Nikki Dolittle's van pulling into the car park (she our dog walker friend)...and so did Remus and he sprinted the distance in about a minute and greeted her like he hadn't seen her for weeks...we walked with her yesterday! I had already out Tonks on the lead and as we got closer and she noticed it was Nikki and literally clawed her way towards her trying to drag me with her.

Bella does the same thing with my home hairdresser - especially when we see her in the street. And honestly all she does is DRIVE BELLA NUTS! I'm always telling her not to - she's always picking her up too and I'm always telling her not to do that. I was so not-so-secretly pleased when she went so nuts running to greet her one day that when she picked her up she pissed all over her T-shirt! I just grinned broadly and said 'told you not to make too much fuss of her - she hasn't had a wee yet' (I did find her a clean T-shirt tho!)

**it all started when Bella was a puppy and I was telling her how they recommend a water squirter to stop them biting and barking but how Bella just bluddy loved it and it not only made her worse - she barked for me to continue squirting her. Well ... hairdressers have water squirters don't they? So it's a lunatic game of squirt the dog all round the apartment every time she comes now which is every 3 weeks or so!

If I didn't like the girl so much and it wasn't so obvious that she ADORES Bella I could get quite annoyed at the way she carries on. But I can't be that mean. Anyway she makes home made bread pudding and always brings me a big slab lol!

See what I mean?