Puppy jumping.
Discussion
We have a developing issue with our puppy.
Douglas is a 5 month old bullmastiff and generally well behaved, however on his walks he’s recently started trying to jump at people as they pass. There’s no aggression when he does it. I think he just wants attention.
When he does the same at home when we get in he gets no attention at all until he’s sat. We’re obviously unable to do this on a walk.
How do we train him out of this? He’s rapidly growing and will be difficult to stop should this become engrained behaviour.
Douglas is a 5 month old bullmastiff and generally well behaved, however on his walks he’s recently started trying to jump at people as they pass. There’s no aggression when he does it. I think he just wants attention.
When he does the same at home when we get in he gets no attention at all until he’s sat. We’re obviously unable to do this on a walk.
How do we train him out of this? He’s rapidly growing and will be difficult to stop should this become engrained behaviour.
In the past I've used a firm 'NO, DOWN!' with the palm of my hand on the dog's face, pushing them down back down; even better if you push your hand close to their face as soon as you even suspect it might happen, with the same firm 'NO, DOWN!'.
These were on slightly easier dogs to handle than a mature mastiff but if still a puppy, it should learn (hopefully!).
These were on slightly easier dogs to handle than a mature mastiff but if still a puppy, it should learn (hopefully!).
I was considering the focus on me approach - I have started to talk to him as we get closer to people which doesn’t seem to work (maybe I’m not interesting enough and need to work on my dog bants?)
I was thinking about taking some treats and as someone approaches tempt him with these but I don’t want him to associate seeing strangers with getting treats.
I was thinking about taking some treats and as someone approaches tempt him with these but I don’t want him to associate seeing strangers with getting treats.
Edited by darren9 on Monday 6th December 18:50
rxe said:
I don’t think they’re actually smart enough to think through “someone is coming, if I act up, the boss will do some stuff about sitting and give me treats”. I think they go “boss has food, boss is interesting, what stranger?”
You need to google ‘Pavlov’s dog’ to get a better understanding.OP have you taken the bullmastif to any puppy training classes? If not that’s where I’d start unless you have lots of experience in training dogs.
With my dog when we venture through 'cat alley' he used to play up but now if I have my hand in my pocket he looks at me on the off chance he'll get a treat. Usually he will, just one tiny nibble. Sometimes I don't give him one and after a while he may get one nibble every other day or so. My aim is to break his focus on the cats. It seems to work well enough. Even on the park he's walking closer to my side so as to see where my hands are. I don't give him treats for walking at my side but clearly I've become interesting :-)
bennno said:
You need to google ‘Pavlov’s dog’ to get a better understanding.
OP have you taken the bullmastif to any puppy training classes? If not that’s where I’d start unless you have lots of experience in training dogs.
He’s been to a few classes but they’re on a weekend and me and the wife work shifts. Which works brilliantly for caring for the dog(s) but not so much for committing to classes. OP have you taken the bullmastif to any puppy training classes? If not that’s where I’d start unless you have lots of experience in training dogs.
We do have some experience. My wife grew up around large breeds and this is our 3rd mastiff (plus one French bulldog) so we’re used to handling them.
I’ll give the treats a try when we go later today.
bennno said:
You need to google ‘Pavlov’s dog’ to get a better understanding.
OP have you taken the bullmastif to any puppy training classes? If not that’s where I’d start unless you have lots of experience in training dogs.
I know about Pavlov and his salivating dog. OP have you taken the bullmastif to any puppy training classes? If not that’s where I’d start unless you have lots of experience in training dogs.
The point is not about the trigger - the point is about the distraction. If you train the dog correctly, they will see the person, then look to you to ask them to do something, because that is what you do when you see a person coming towards you.. They will complete their task and get a reward. Reward is associated with task, not the person.
Put simply they don’t go:
Person -> food
They go;
Person -> task -> task given -> task executed -> food.
In an ideal scenario, the dog sees a person/thing/whatever and its natural reaction is to look at you for a command. That command might be sit, down etc. You then reward completion of the command. If you always make the command “sit”, then a smart dog may actually sit as a default reaction, and expect a reward for doing this.
Which is what pisses me off about people vegging on their phones while walking the dog, they’re not paying attention to the dog at all.
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