Training Your Dog NOT To Jump Up

One of the most annoying behaviors that dogs have is jumping up. Not only is it annoying, but it can be dangerous too, especially if your dog jumps on an elderly person or a child and knocks them down. To avoid any injury, hard feelings or even a law suit it’s a good idea to train your dog not to jump up.
When a dog jumps up on people it is usually meant as a friendly greeting. He wants to get closer to your face and say “Hi”. Unfortunately we often encourage this behavior. After all, who isn’t happy to see their pet after a long day at work and when he jumps up on you in an overjoyed greeting, you usually respond by petting and rewarding him!
The first thing you need to do is stop encouraging him! You have to be a little tough on this one as your first inclination is to greet your pet in kind, but you will have to do what is best for both you and your dog and hold off the greeting until after your dog’s 4 feet are firmly planted on the ground.
As with all training, you need to get the dog to perform the desired behavior first before he can associate the command with what you want him to do. In this case the behavior is to NOT jump up, but in order to get him to associate not jumping; he has to jump up first.
One way to get your dog to “not jump” is to bring your knee up to his chest when he starts to jump up on you. I don’t mean to kick him – do this gently so that he is a little off balance causing him to go back down to all fours. So the key is to cause the jumping behavior and then while the dog is jumping up, you need to stop the behavior while issuing the “Off” command. When the dog responds by going to all fours, you praise and reward him.
Now, your first thought might be to use the word “Down” for this but if you have already used it as the command for “lay down” then you will need to pick another word. In this article, I suggest using the word “Off” but you can choose any word you want as long as it is short and does not sound like any of the other commands your dog already knows.
The knee technique might not work on all dogs, especially smaller ones so in this case you might want to use a leash and collar. When the dog starts to jump, tug sideways on the collar and issue the “Off” command. This distracts the dog from jumping and he will likely remain standing at which point you can reward him.
Like with any command, repetition is key. The idea is to observe your dog closely and see when he is about to jump up on someone then issue the command. It can be really helpful to have another person help you with this. Eventually you want to get to a place where your dog doesn’t even have a chance to jump – you’ll be able to tell when he is thinking about it and issue the command that will keep him, and the person he was going to jump on, standing firmly on the ground.