What if my dog gets too excited at the dog park?

When your dog becomes overly excited and jumps on you, turn away and ask your dog to sit. Once they do it, praise them and reinforce what you want by rewarding them with something they love, like a treat or petting them. Ignore the behaviour you don’t want, in this case, your dog jumping on you, you are ensuring you are not reinforcing that behaviour. Turn away and redirect, ignore the behaviour, when your dog begins to jump up or become overexcited, turn away from them and ignore the behaviour. Ask your dog to sit and stay, for this to work, your dog should already be trained to understand the sit and stay cues. If your dog starts getting excited again, tossing treats can interrupt the behaviour and moves the dog away from the person, this gives them time to move away. Tossing treats also keeps the dog’s head and feet down, so they learn good things are on the ground. By tossing treats for your dog, you are giving them a chance to interrupt the behaviour, your dog gets busy getting treats and stops jumping.

If she starts escalating her behaviour I will grab her and lead her away from them, or pick her up. I take her away from the other dogs and just hold her firmly by her collar and tell her time out for a couple minutes. Sometimes I'll put her on leash and walk her over to the empty areas and try to do some basic obedience stuff with her until she calms down. Once she's responding to commands and able to pay attention I'll try letting her free again. I'll still try and discourage the behaviour if it gets over a certain level, and give timeouts if she seems to be going too far.

Like many dogs, Goose became over excited when he went to greet new people or greet strangers at the dog park. He was also overly excited when meeting new dogs. We talked about giving Goose the opportunity to learn how to build up self control and emotional regulation so he could make good choices when going to the dog park. The best way to help Goose learn how to control himself is to set him up for success by putting him in situations that allow him to make the right choices. To continue with this good behavior the guardians will want to continue to set Goose up for success by increasing the excitement of meeting a new person or dog in small, manageable increments. This will allow him to slowly learn how to handle more exciting situations such as a dog park over time but also generalize his experience to meeting new dogs and people not only at home and at the dog park but in other situations as well.