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Jumping
Jumping is a dog’s way of capturing your attention. It is a very rewarding behavior if we do not handle jumping in the appropriate manner. Since the dog is seeking your attention the best solution is to teach your dog a more appropriate way to get your attention. You can do this by teaching your dog how to calmly request the need for attention.
Requiring your dog to sit in the presence of guests will teach your dog a more suitable way to greet people. Be sure to pet and praise your dog when he is behaving calmly and is not jumping on you or guests. Be careful to not praise in a way that will cause your dog to get excited and begin jumping.
Jumping must have consequences. Since jumping is used as a way of capturing your attention, then you must remove your attention as a way of showing the dog that jumping is no longer a rewarding behavior. You can simply ignore the dog, turn away so the paws fall to the floor or totally remove yourself from the room so the dog does not have access to jump on you. By shunning the dog, he will soon learn that every time he jumps up on people he is getting the opposite of what he wants, which is your attention.
As with all behavior modification, consistency is the only way to reliably change the behavior.
