How to train a dog to be calm in public?

Implement a “relax” command at home. Catch your dog in a relaxed state and reward them. Introduce the “calm” or “relax” command. Choose a word that you’ll use to name this calm state, and say it whenever you give your dog a reward. Gradually invite your dog to go into a calm state on command. Burn off excess energy once you’re ready to start testing out your new calm command in public, you can set your dog up for success by exercising them beforehand. Start training in a quiet public place, you might go during a time of day when you know there won’t be too many people around or choose a part of the restaurant with the least amount of foot traffic. Keep your visits short and sweet to start, just like you would train any other behavior, you’ll want to stick with very short training sessions at the beginning. Always reward calm behavior, whenever your dog shows a moment of calmness, be ready to reward them with a treat. If they cannot calm down even for a moment, bring them outside of the restaurant for a reset. Manage your own stress levels, as dog owners, we set the tone for our dogs, so if you tend to feel stressed, embarrassed, or angry when your dog acts out in public, it’s possible that your emotional state will make the situation worse.

To help your dog learn to be calm in public, it’s hard for your dog to learn how to settle when there are distractions, so it’s best to begin practicing somewhere quiet. Reward relaxed behaviours, to begin with you may just need to reward your dog for any behaviour that doesn’t involve staring at you, pulling on the lead, or barking. Sit quietly on a chair with your dog on the lead and a blanket on the floor, drop tiny bite-size treats to your dog as a reward for settling down on the blanket. Gradually reward more relaxed behaviours, this will vary between dogs – some will automatically start lying down so you can quickly progress to rewarding your dog only for this behaviour. Then move on to reward specific signs of relaxing like sighing, weight shifting and head resting. Once your dog starts to get the hang of it and is shifting their weight so they’re comfortable and relaxed, you can start practising with them off lead. Add in distractions slowly by practising the ‘settle’ in increasingly busy areas or ask a helper to create a distraction by walking past, progressing to more exciting activities like sweeping or skipping. If your dog becomes unsettled or gets up, ignore them and wait until they settle again before rewarding them. If they won’t relax and settle, increase the distance from the distraction or make the distraction less interesting. Once your dog has learnt the basic objective of being settled, try training in different locations with more distractions. Try to resist telling your dog what to do during training, the aim is for them to learn for themselves to be calm and to relax.

You wouldn’t expect your dog to learn to sit, roll over or shake hands without a good grounding of training, and so the same goes for asking them to settle in the pub when you’re on holiday. Until they’ve learned that lying down quietly is the way to get rewards, they’re likely to keep pestering you or others around you for attention. At home, before you even brave a pub garden or a café terrace, get your dog used to lying at your feet around a dining table by asking them to do exactly that: stick their lead and collar or harness on, give them the down command while you sit at your table, and occasionally reward their passive behaviour from a stash of treats in your pocket. Reward fairly regularly to begin with, but gradually lengthen the gaps between rewards until you can go for several minutes without a nose nudge or a fidgeting dog. If you notice them disengaging from you (such as looking away, or resting their head on the floor) during these gaps, reward this too, as they’ll begin to learn that they needn’t keep all their attention on you. Once you’ve mastered this at home, it’s time to take it into the wild – head out alone so you can focus on the training and don’t order anything too involved, you’ll want to be able to keep one eye on the dog at all times while they’re still learning.