Do dogs outgrow jumping on people?
Sienna Barton
2025-07-22 18:13:17
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Most dogs jump up to get our attention. Your dog is likely to jump up at you when they’re excited to see you. Often, we encourage jumping up in puppies when they’re small and cute. But this can make things confusing for them when they grow up and we no longer want them to behave like this. Don’t worry if this sounds like your pooch because you can teach them not to do it. Over time your dog will learn that there is just no point jumping up any longer. Instead, they start to learn the new, better and safer ways to behave. If your dog only receives attention from people for sitting when they approach, you should soon notice your dog automatically sitting and waiting for people to interact with them.
Aryanna Smith
2025-07-16 01:23:32
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Most puppy jumping will diminish in time. Ignoring, turning away, disengaging, and otherwise not rewarding the jumping is typically enough to reduce the behavior over time. Punishing this pro-social behavior in young puppies isn’t necessary and can bring about unintended associations. If a pup is jumping on your legs, I advise people to ignore until all four paws hit the ground, then either move along or feed a tidbit immediately while all four paws are on the ground. As your puppy develops and grows into an adult dog, things change. If puppy jumping hasn’t extinguished on its own by the time the dog approaches adolescence, it’s time to teach an alternate behavior like a polite sit-for-greeting. When we all interact like this consistently, the jumping up behavior will fade before 6 months of age.
Helmer Bechtelar
2025-07-11 08:51:45
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Most dogs crave attention, and jumping up is a way to try and interact with you on your level. In the vast majority of dogs, there are two main drivers for jumping – firstly, a desire for attention, and secondly, that they have inadvertently been trained to do it. Most puppies learn early on that jumping gets them attention, as puppies, this is often in the form of reward. As adults, this may continue, or their owners may shout at them – but when you’re shouting at your dog, you are still giving them attention, and not ignoring them. Our inconsistency here doesn’t help – many people are happy for their dog to jump at them, but not at guests, or when wearing some clothes but not others – but by accepting any jumping behaviour, they are essentially teaching the dog that jumping at people is acceptable. Dogs are generally poor at distinguishing between those situations when a behaviour is acceptable and those when it isn’t.
In these situations, there are two main approaches to stopping dogs from jumping up. It is vitally important to remember that neither of them involves punishment. Punishing your dog for jumping will, at best, confuse them, and at worst result in a frightened and potentially aggressive dog.
The other thing you can do is to completely ignore your dog whenever they jump, you do, however, reward them when their front feet are on the floor. This way, you are teaching them that jumping does NOT result in attention, but standing on all fours does.
In both cases, it takes time and patience – but it is more than worth it to teach them suitable behaviour.
Grace Rutherford
2025-06-28 18:20:39
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Your dog is jumping on you and others to get attention. Your dog likes interacting with people, this jumping behavior gets them the human attention they crave. You may find the jumping behavior gets worse for a little while when you start completely ignoring the behavior. Your dog is thinking, “Jumping up on people used to work, I must need to do it more.” This is completely common and is called an extinction burst. This escalation of behavior will usually pass quickly. If done correctly and all humans are on board with the no look, touch, talk rule, this behavior will subside significantly in a week for most dogs. You’ll find your dog will attempt the jumping behavior for less than 10 seconds before abandoning it because it isn’t working for them.
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