How to get your dog to greet people calmly?

To teach your dog to greet calmly, it starts with developing their ability to listen to you and accept your guidance even when they’re excited and want to do something else. Your dog’s self-control is crucial, which is their ability to hold themselves back from doing something exciting, even when they REALLY want to do it. Most dogs don’t naturally have much self-control, but it CAN be taught. Your dog’s ability to listen to you, even when they don’t want to, is also important, as they also have their own driving forces. Once you have a good training foundation, and your dog has learnt self-control and how to listen even when they’d rather do something else, you can start teaching them to greet dogs calmly close at hand. This means you can closely monitor their behaviour and step in if they make a bad choice, to teach them what is and isn’t appropriate. As they get more practice, they develop the habit of greeting nicely and eventually, you can trust them to greet new dogs politely, even without you right there. If you try and jump to the off-lead greeting stage too early though, you’ll just teach your dog that they don’t have to listen to you, because they have too much freedom to rush up to other dogs and greet them rudely, without you being able to quickly step in and help them make better choices.

For many dogs, meeting new people can be all too exciting. This can sometimes manifest in jumping up, licking, mouthing or general hyperactive behaviour. Lots of dogs simply don’t know how to deal with people in this situation, so ideally we want to teach our dogs to greet new people politely, whether in the house or out on the street. You will also need to practice ignoring those unwanted behaviours, such as jumping up, licking, intense sniffing, etc. Even negative attention is still attention, which can be reinforcing for a dog that craves attention. To help with this, we want to change the dog’s initial reaction to these noises and show them a preferred behaviour. Identify the first trigger of excitement, in many cases this is the doorbell. Ring (or have someone ring) the doorbell. If your dog remains calm, give them a treat. If your dog reacts, ignore the behaviour until your dog settles – then give them a treat. Asking for a controlled behaviour such as ‘sit’ is a good alternative to jumping up behaviours. Ask a friend to ring the bell. Ask your dog to sit slightly away from the door as the new person enters. You can have your dog on a loose lead if it’s easier. Reward your dog for continuing to sit as the new person enters. If your dog gets up, the person should move back, and the exercise should start again without reward. Repeat this with the dog sitting for as long as possible. When your visitor is ready to interact with the dog, you can tell your dog that it is OK to greet them. ‘Say hello’ is a good command to use for this. Give a treat to your visitor and ask them to drop this on the floor as the dog approaches.