Is your dog overexcited with visitors? Do they bark every time you have guests at home, or greet them rudely by jumping on them? We’re going to look at some useful tips on teaching your dog to greet visitors and behave more politely when they come into the house.
Some dogs are very happy whenever they receive visitors at home. They enjoy their stay and, in many cases, they even interact with their guests by looking for play and attention.
However, in other cases, dogs can perceive the entry of people into their house as a negative. In these situations, they will often show signs of rejection including
The most frequent situation, however, is usually a mixture of the two. Dogs can often show different behaviours depending on whether the people entering the house are known to your dog—such as family members and friends—or are unknown—delivery people, tradesmen, and so on.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, dogs tend to show affiliative signals towards people who are familiar to them. For example, they might adopt a friendly approach or seek physical contact with a familiar visitor. In contrast, they may react negatively to strangers. This can take the form of barking, growling, or even fearful postures.
This difference in your dog’s behaviour is generally to be expected. In fact, it can be quite logical if we take into account that a dog may perceive the entry of "strangers" into the area where they feel most secure and protected (their home) as a threatening situation. Meeting people from the family environment, on the other hand, will usually be a reason for joy.
There are several factors that can influence the range of a dog's liking or disliking of guests, of which we will mention the three main ones.
Temperament refers to a dog’s innate way of being. This will determine individual traits such as their degree of sociability (their interest and desire for contact with people), their degree of daring, or their tendency to fear new stimuli (such as an unfamiliar person).
Another important factor is the level of socialization acquired towards people. This refers to a dog’s level of comfort in the presence of people in their home, built up through experiences in the early stages of their life. According to this, a dog that is properly socialized towards people will tend to be more accepting of entry and contact when people enter their house. In contrast, a poorly socialized dog is likely to show a greater fear and rejection of them.
The third most relevant factor is learning. This refers to the possible associations—both positive and negative—that a dog may have made towards people throughout their life and through different experiences.
If your dog is reactive to visitors, the first thing we should ask ourselves is whether our dogs enjoy these visitors coming into the house. This should affect how much we expose our dogs to visitors. For example, if your dog has a bad time, is fearful, or becomes nervous or aggressive while visitors are around, we should consider keeping them separated at that initial moment.
On the other hand, if your dog loves to receive visitors, we should not deprive them of this situation. That being said, we should still control their behaviour if they are very abrupt or effusive. For example, if your dog is jumping on guests, we should still prevent this behaviour by using their leash.
Other actions that we can implement to encourage appropriate behaviour when visitors arrive include:
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