Overly enthused when meeting people

[CherylHampton]

Hi, this question relates to a similar topic I posted about how to deal with Shiloh and his excitement when meeting different people. Now, when we went to visit my mom over the wknd. He was good to go until she came out, he wanted to get to her so badly all fours came off the ground, thrashing his head to get out of his collar(leash on). He's been around her before and generally is just interested in her feet, though he doesn't chew like he used to. Also I had a repairman come yesterday, he was fine til I answered the door. He got excited and nipped my hands(not hard) I think he just wanted my attention to alert me we had someone else in the house. He was very friendly with the guy, and after a few minutes he settled and just laid  down. he he guy had to be in and out a few times and each time Shiloh was excited to see him. I leashed him of course and that didn't do anything except make him more intent to get to where he wanted. He minds very well with me, but out and about or around new folks, its like he's never been taught a thing. I will say that my nephew took him for a walk in the woods, and he was very complimentary about how obedient Shiloh was. So there is that. He's come such a long way with his leash(he still likes to chew on it occasionally) I know he will get with the program and learn to contain himself eventually. We have a vet visit soon, am a bit anxious about how that's going to go.

[Adrienne]

The initial excitement is often the most challenging. Many pups get overly excited when there are guests or people they want to meet/greet. It's part of them not having attained yet sufficient impulse control which comes with...you name it, training, and I have to add here also maturing. I know how you feel because my female Rottie Petra was a social butterfly as a pup and she would go crazy when she saw people she knew or wanted to meet badly and couldn't.

Things tend to get better with training, but the most substantial changes are seen when we can get our pups to meet several people (rather than less-as COVID19 is forcing us to do) and get to practice in different settings-and with the right type of people (those who won't pet the puppy when they're jumping and acting hyper, reinforcing their hyper behaviors).

Here is a read for such scenarios:

https://www.braintraining4dogs.com/members/archive/approaching-people/

In your mom's example, she is the biggest reinforcement. So we can use this to our advantage by making access to her contingent upon him displaying calmer behaviors. 

-So if possible, you can enlist her for help if she's willing to. I would suggest when you go see your mom that she try to approach him only once he has calmed down. Tell her to totally ignore him, no looking at him or talking to him. So if she's coming out, the moment Shiloh starts acting hyper, she moves away and out of sight. Rinse and repeat as often as needed. Once he is calmer, have her approach. Ideally, we would like him to engage in some alternate behavior such as hand targeting her hand or sitting, but you'll need to take baby steps since he's so young and enthusiastic. So you may initially accept him just sniffing her and immediately dropping treats so he doesn't feel like jumping and then her walking away and then practice more and more until you can progress to asking him to hand target or sit and then reinforce those by allowing him to meet her.

-Another exercise are leash exercises, where you use your mom as the biggest reinforcer and practice walking towards her, the loose leash makes you both walk closer to your mom, a tense leash makes you turn and go the opposite way. Rinsing and repeating until you reach your goal of him getting to her without pulling. However, it may be preferable working with the first exercise at first and having your mom leave when he acts hyper just because we don't want to create any possible frustration in case he may associate the leash with preventing him from getting where he wants. 

-You may want to have him in a harness next time as we don't want him learning how to back out of a collar. It can take just one collar escape for a bad habit to establish. Another option is a martingale collar which works well for dogs who try to back out of regular collars.

With the repairman coming in and out, I would suggest having him stay on a mat. He is young so he may not be able to hold a strong stay despite strong distractions yet, so it may help if you can can stay besides him on the mat as you feed him goodies there for staying there despite the strong distraction. As you do this, you are also creating positive associations with the worker rather than a dog who barks and acts nervous. Here is the basic guide on training to lie on a mat:

https://www.braintraining4dogs.com/members/video-archive/train-dog-go-to-mat/

It's quite normal and expected that behaviors that seemed trained very well in quiet environments tend to start falling apart when there are distractions. This is why I recommend to go slow and gradually, start training at home, then in the yard, then on walks, then around other dogs, and then at the dog park. Dogs are not great at generalizing newly learned behaviors. This is also one of the biggest complaints dog owners have when taking their dogs to obedience classes. Their dogs are able to listen well in class, but then once "out in the real world" all the training seems to fall apart and the dog acts as if he was never trained before. 

These dogs though were really trained in the home or in class, it's just they haven't had the chance to work around distractions and the behavior hasn't therefore generalized to such settings. This is mostly a matter of practicing more in distracting settings, and distractions need to be added gradually, always ensuring the dog is under threshold. Practice makes perfect. 

So if you have your mom coming over, or other relatives, take those as training opportunities. If you can practice on that often enough, you are then a step closer to getting what you would like to see him do more often. 

[Adrienne]

About the vet visit, do lots of fun handling exercises. Even better, see if you can set up some "mock visits" with some helpers. You can have him stand on a table and practice doing what vets normally do. More on this here:

https://www.braintraining4dogs.com/members/archive/fear-of-the-vet/

If you have a fear-free vet near you, that can help a lot to establish a relationship based on trust.

https://fearfreepets.com/resources/directory/