Four Training Commands That Assist with Come and NOT Jumping

When I got my second dog, Neptune, I remember not understanding why we could not just work on his reactivity.  Why did we need to do this other stuff.  Neptune was the first dog that began my introduction into dog training.   Truly, he was not that bad at all, but I was that novice of a dog owner.  The trainers involved were spot on.  I don't know if I fully realized how spot on they were at the time.  Neptune managed to have a great life despite my very novice dog owner training skills with him.  There is a definite learning curve when you begin training your dog.  

Video of Lucy Doing  Circle Sit Stays:

Training your dog and modifying their behavior is not just one thing if you want something that is reliable (not perfect but reliable) and well understood by your canine companion.

  Lucy came here because her owners want her to learn not to jump on people And they want an improvement on her recall (come command).   

The 4 Commands that can indirectly start to solidify these are:

1. The heel command (when your dog walks beside you) gets your dog used to working closely with you, following your lead, and no jumping on you.
2. The steps of the place command also work the dog close to you, following you, and learning not to jump on you or approach someone who comes in the room.   The long place portion of the exercise also works on impulse control.
3. The sit command teaches the dog (especially when working on distractions later on) to keep their front paws on the floor, to go into the sit position when told to (like when someone is coming), and make a habit of doing this when greeting people.
4. The stay command is basically my sit command, as I give a release to any sit I do.  Some people additionally use the word stay if they want their dog to stay there.

Of course, we also go through all the steps of the "Come" command.  Many people use "Off" for getting off them or the furniture when they jump off.   You could also use "Leave It" to be more proactive (if you have taught that around a multitude of things including people and dogs).  I prefer sit, and I make it a habit if that is what and why I am working on something like reducing or getting rid of jumping on things or beings.  

Over the years, I have found having a more complete communication system with my dogs (and my client's dogs) provides more opportunities to practice and use our communication system in different scenarios.  Also a dog really does not enjoy just doing one or two things with you.  As a dog owner, you have to keep the training (in my opinion) a little interesting and challenging to prevent boredom.  

​Please let us know if this helped you in the comments on this blog or our Facebook and Instagram pages.