Enthusiatic Greeter

[Guest Anonymous]

My 6 mo old Shih Tzu/Peke is way too enthusiastic when we come home or when anyone, for that matter, comes in our door. She's just a bouncing ball of fur and I can hardly hang on to her when I pick her up. It takes a few minutes and then she calms down. Can someone give me some ideas on how to get her to be a little more gracious to our guests :oops: and also to stay on the floor when we come home? :o [/img]

[imported_Matty]

Perhaps if you had yourself and others ignore her until she calms down a bit. Then have her sit and only make of her when she sits and gives a nice calm behavior. Kinda like rewarding the behavior you want. Dogs learn to display actions to get the most attention. If jumping up and acting like a ball of fire gets attention and laughing and a high pitched voice from owner then the dog will continue. I have gone as far as to change my tone of voice until my dogs learned to greet me properly. I have also crossed my arms and turned away from a bounding bouncing dog with a too far great enthusiastic greeting. You might also want to impliment the NIFIL policy just so your little bundle of joy learns a default behavior in times of stress.

[imported_Matty]

One last thing, most times with behaviors such as this we the owners have encouraged it. We get excited, and get a high squeeky voice and get our dogs so aroused and excited they are just about jumping out of their skins. If you don't mind this sort of behavior and find it wonderful and special to have such an enthusiastic greeting then so be it. If it drives you nuts then try to make greetings and departures much more calm and subdued. We owners 98% of the time unknowningly teach our dogs these behaviors and then expect them just to know that we have grown tired of the behavior or it is no longer tolerated.
Good luck to you, and remember, change the tone of voice, ignore the dog for a few minutes when you first come home, come down to the dogs level for a proper greeting, don't make the dog have to jump up to your level to greet you. That is one thing I found worked on my small breed dogs, to come down to them to greet them :wink:
Have your friends practice the same greetings with your dog and you will have a dog which will soon learn the proper way to greet and get belly rubs. :D

[Guest Anonymous]

Thanks Matty, yeah :roll: we thought she was so funny bouncing off the walls when we came home. She even has our other dog acting up too and she used to be such a little lady. Your ideas sound good. We will use them and let you know how we're doing. :)