How To Train Your Dog To Greet Visitors

PAWPRIDES, 23 JUNE 2020

How to train your dog to greet visitors starts with teaching calm and structured behaviour. Much like humans, meeting new people brings excitement and joy for dogs.

Curious and inquisitive creatures, it’s only expected that new and wonderful sights, smells and pack members bring this energy forward in their behaviour. Typical greeting behaviours you’ll find in puppies and untrained dogs can include:

Barking
Jumping
Running around the house in hysteria

A much frustrating situation for dog owners and visitors.

The good news is that with patience, consistency and some basic training, all dogs can be shown how to be polite greeters. But first, lets take a further look at how and why dogs greet humans the way they do.

How Do Dogs Greets Humans

Canines greet humans in many ways to show affection and love. Common greeting behaviours include smiling, licking, leaning, jumping and excessive tail wagging. This means the dog is friendly and excited to greet their owners or visitors.

While behaviours like jumping and licking can be entertaining and loving, it’s not always welcomed.

Many owners will unknowingly teach their dog these habits by doing something we call ‘intermittent-reinforcement’.

Intermittent Reinforcement

Intermittent reinforcement is giving your dog attention with touch and talk (whether good or bad) when something like jumping or licking happens. This tells the dog that they will get a response by doing those behaviours. In turn, you’re unknowingly rewarding a behaviour that we, if not all trainers see as undesirable.

Your dog then learns to be excited and energetic when meeting new people and dogs, and dogs with this much excitement are closer to reactive decisions compared to dogs who are calm.

Calm dogs make smart decisions.

How To Greet Your Dog

A big step in training your dog to greet visitors is training your dog to correctly greet you. What we want our dogs to understand is if they want to interact with the family, they must be calm.

A great way to do this is to train the sit and stay command.

Click here to learn more about teaching sit, stay and several other useful commands.

Use a mat near the door for them to sit on. This will help your dog know where to go when visitors arrive.

Training Tip

When they’ve obeyed the command and are calm, reward with verbal praise, treats and soft touch.

Once your dog knows where they must sit you can practice this drill by going in and out of the house. Again, the purpose of this is to train your dog to be in a calm state before receiving attention from the pack.

Photo by Leonides Ruvalcabar on Unsplash

How Do You Greet A Strange Dog?

Greeting a strange dog can be a wonderful experience, but it pays to do the right things by the dog and his handler.

Dogs are super conscious of personal space. Restricting a dogs personal space can often trigger fear, stress and aggression from acts such as picking up, hugging or restraining parts of their body. This can be perceived as an attempt to control, block an escape route or exert dominance.

Follow these steps when approaching a strange dog:

Avoid direct eye contact – this can be perceived as a threat and/or challenge putting more pressure on the dog. This is an intimidating action and invasion of space.
Approach them in a relaxed manner – kneeling down with your shoulder to the dog, looking ahead of you and away from the dog is one of the most least threatening ways to approach a dog.
Check with the handler first – most handlers will allow a greet but in the case they’re in training, working or have problematic background its not wise to inflict that pressure.
Do not pet them – usually the first thing a stranger will do is pet a dogs head; one of the most vulnerable parts of the dogs body. This can be seen as aggressive or threatening. If the owner has allowed you to pet them start with the cheeks, back or chest first.

Photo by Tamara Bellis on Unsplash

How To Train Your Dog When Someone Comes To The Door

Once you’ve mastered the basics mentioned above on how to greet your dog, you’re ready to train your dog to greet visitors at the door. It’s best to practice this with the help of a friend first so your dog understands what is required of him.

Have your dog leash hanging on the door or somewhere close by.
Have your friend knock or ring the door bell.
Walk to the door with your dog and leash him.
Give your dog the sit, stay command and open the door.

If your dog breaks his sit, close the door and repeat the drill. Once your dog can hold his sit, offer positive reinforcement with either a treat, calm verbal praise or soft touch.

Consistent training sessions with different helpers will build a solid foundation and understanding for your dog.

If you discover your dog can’t contain their excitement there are two things to look at:

Distraction from your helper – its important they know the etiquette to greeting new dogs. It’s best they ignore your dog all together.

Allowing breaks – set your dog up for success by keeping training intervals short and sweet with breaks to let them cool off.

To advance your dogs training you can then ask your friend to enter the house and you both take a seat. This is where you can use the ‘place’ command.

Teach Your Dog Place Command

Training your dog to place is both simple and very effective, especially when having guests over. Using this command can keep your dog in a place of choice when you direct them too.

Watch the video below to learn the place command.

FAQ

Why does my dog get so excited?

Dogs are extremely loyal creatures and often think about their family members when alone and bored. Therefore it is common to see excitement when owners return home as its more likely they will get a walk or engage in some activity with you.