When it comes to your dog’s calm door greeting manners, many wish their dog would stop jumping on guests and keep four paws on the ground. Let me introduce you to one story. Once upon a time, Brutus was afraid of me as he was afraid of many new people and things in his environment. These days it is beautiful to see how he is feeling so happy in life. Now my arrival is exciting for him. However, that means he tends to greet me (and others who he is also happy to see) by jumping on me. There are lots of different ways to work with over-excited dog greeters. Let’s look at one hack for calm greetings by your dog.
For this client, we tried this calm greeting hack. She had a Kong station just outside the door for when I arrived. Before knocking on the door, I put peanut butter in the Kong and held it in my hand. When Brutus came to greet me, I immediately showed him the Kong and walked him to his bed where he could work on it. Licking and smelling can have calming effects and can help turn that arousing association with guests arriving to a calmer association.
The calm greeting hack worked beautifully for us in that situation. The test will be trying it over and over again with different people.
You can do this too. You can put a cooler outside your door with non-perishable food and a Kong (or other food stuffing toy).
