Calming an Overly Excited Dog

Ding, dong! Every pet owner’s heart drops as her dogs charge toward the front door. Ringing doorbells and door knocks can literally cause chaos, which translates to overly excited dogs greeting guests. Next time you’re planning a summer get-together, try these polite greetings tips. It’s important to practice this with your dog every day and reward good behavior generously before your party.

Control the Chaos First

Containing your dogs’ excitement is key before guests ring the doorbell or walk into your backyard. Calm dogs generally greet guests with polite manners, so crate your dogs in a back room with soft music playing in the background (this drowns out doorbell sounds).

Once guests are gathered, allow one of your dogs to visit guests. This prevents your dog from riling your other dogs up with barking and fast movement. When the first dog has calmed down, add another dog to the mix and so forth.

Ask Guests to Ignore Dogs

Before the day of your party, ask each guest to simply ignore your dogs when they first arrive. Overly excited guest greetings will send excited dogs into a frenzy of jumping up and knocking people over. If guests have a hard time ignoring your darling dogs, ask them to stand around your kitchen island, picnic table or BBQ pit.

Giving guests something to do, other than greet dogs, works wonderfully. Don’t worry, your dogs won’t be upset they missed a super friendly greeting. Instead, your dogs are learning polite manners around guests.

Ignoring dogs means:

• No petting.
• No eye contact.
• Turing sideways from an approaching dog.
• Refraining from any high-pitched, rapidly repeating sounds.
• Acting like they don’t see your dogs.

What guests should do when ignoring dogs:

• Eat.
• Drink.
• Pass food around.
• Talk to each other.
• Freely move around without making eye contact with your dogs.

Keep Greetings Short

Once you’ve welcomed your guests and they have successfully ignored your dogs, it’s time for a break. It’s important to keep dog greetings short. After 10 minutes of your dogs greeting everyone, put them back in their crates with a food stuffed Kong.

It’s now time to enjoy your guests without worrying about jumping dogs or guests having their eyeballs licked while sitting on the sofa. Of course, your dogs can certainly tell guests goodbye, but they should do so politely. 🙂

Treat & Retreat

If guests ignoring your super excited dogs doesn’t work, then ask guests to play the “treat and retreat” game. For this dog game, guests sit still and toss food behind your dog’s behind, so your dog has to turn away to get the treat. Not only does this teach your dog that guests make food happen, but your dog also learns to keep all four feet on the floor during greetings. If your guests are unsure about the game, toss the treats for them to create the positive association for your dog.

Gatherings are perfect opportunities to practice polite dog greetings.