It’s as unacceptable as having an unintroduced person jumping up on you.
Nope.
My dog will sometimes do it to people in his own house if he gets too excited and forgets. But he gets corrected. In public he is on a leash and my control over the leash would keep it from happening. Generally though, he isn’t dominant enough to approach strange people outside his own yard.
Its hard when there are crossed signals though. My dog generally doesn’t beg…but the first couple weeks after we host a party he has to be broken of his “new trick” that’s been taught to him by our party guests.
This.
And while you’re at it, don’t stick your hand in my dog’s mouth either!
This is really unfair. At least give the owner a chance to correct the dog before immediately thinking less of the owner. After all, the dog may have been a puppy with a different owner that didn’t know how to train the dog, and the new owner may have only had the dog for a couple weeks.
Back to the OP - we bring our dog to a dog park frequently (about 4-5 times a week) - and for the most part, people seem to care less about a specific action of a dog (mine or anyone elses) as opposed to the owners handling of the situation. A dog may misbehave - but if the owner is conscious of it happening and takes action to correct it - what else can you ask for? So if a dog jumps up on someone and the owner does something to dissuade the dog from doing it again, it’s not a problem. And since it is a dog park - if anyone shows up with nice clothes and gets upset when some dirt gets on them - well, they knew it was a dog park and will wear more casual clothes next time.
Certainly not.
Nope. But my puppy is still doing it. He is so short and he wants to be on eye level with everyone he meets. He does it with larger dogs and he has been told - - via a growl – that he is doing a no-no. He needs more consistency, but we hike a lot and it is surprising how many people want to meet the puppy and allow him to jump on them (kids especially! 9 out of 10 kids we meet claim they have dogs at home and it is A-OK if my puppy jumps on them) and so far the only way I can figure out to remedy this is not allow my puppy to even approach other people.
When you see kids (or people approaching with that ‘oh, a puppy!’ gleam - mothers of infants recognize it at 50 paces), pull in a tight leash. As the person gets closer, cut them off with “you can pet him, but you have to get down at his level - we are teaching him not to jump up.”
You won’t succeed in correcting your fellow human beings all the time, but they are less trainable than dogs.
Be very careful doing this. Dogs can interpret this as aggressive behavior. Bites to the face are potentially very serious.
This is our problem. Ours so desperately wants to get to people’s faces, presumably to give them a vigorous licking (she’s a licker), that she’ll take any chance to spring up onto new people, no matter how many times we correct her. It’s quite vexing.
My mother is terrified of the dogs. Even of small dogs; she hates being licked. So if a dog is big enough to put up its paws on her, and comes zooming towards her general location, she would be running in the opposite direction.
I came by a golden retriever the other day. He was just grinning (eh, yah, that’s the best term I can think of) and lifting up its paws as if to initiate a hand-shake. That is more elegant than rushing with paws up.
Never acceptable.
Nope, no jumping. It can be hard to train out of a dog but it’s important to get it done. We worked pretty hard on this with Dolly. Good thing, too, because she grew up to be huge.
Dolly does tend to want to “hold hands” a little too much. Not so much in public but if I’ve got a friend over and they’re not paying attention to her she will sit next to them and put her paw in their lap or on their arm until they give her some attention. Not cool, but it could be worse.
Our dog does this, thanks to our eleven year old who taught shake far too well.
15 years ago or so I was a pizza delivery driver. One evening after knocking on someone’s door, and I heard a voice say “I think it’s time to let the dogs out!” The door opened, and this gigantic dog jumped up and put his paws on my shoulders. It towered over me. Granted, I’m only 5’7", but still…
In the process, the dog pushed me backwards off the porch. Naturally, in an attempt to keep my balance, I began flailing my arms. The pizza bag went flying, end over end, and landed a few feet away upside down.
Then a guy appeared at the door, with a look of horror on his face, looked back into the house and said “Honey, the dog just killed our pizza!”
After apologizing profusely, he explained that they were expecting friends any minute, and thought I was them. He gave me a $10 tip for my “trouble,” but I thought the whole thing was funny.
I imagine many people wouldn’t have taken kindly to this, though, had they been in my shoes.
Yeah, he licks, too. It is funny how kids are mostly OK with the jumping but get grossed out when he licks them. I guess I don’t blame them, especially when he’s been licking other dogs’ mouths. :o
Mine too. Licky McLickerson.
MY dogs will leave you alone, but if you show them the slightest bit of attention; you’re gonna get paw’d.
My dogs may be lacking in discipline as I can’t think of a single person that comes to my house that would be offended by such a thing.
Once in a blue moon I might have to reign them in when I or some one else is wearing something nice but it’s usually not a problem.
Seconded. They don’t even have to feel threatened. I got lightly nipped on the nose once by a dog that was friendly but wound up. In retrospect, I can’t believe how stupid I was getting my face anywhere near hers.
As for the original question, dogs should absolutely not be jumping up on strangers. I won’t look down on someone’s training ability for it, but I will expect them to know the limits of their dog’s training and prevent them from getting into a situation where they can jump on somebody.
I don’t mind, but then again, I like animals and they like me. May have something to do with my semi-druidic nature. Cats that hate people will wind up in my lap. Dogs that are fearsome home protectors will show me their bellies. All things considered, I’d rather be good at picking lottery numbers, but ya gotta play the hand you’re dealt.
Never. If they even pull towards a stranger when they’re on leash, it needs immediate correction. Jumping up on people uninvited, ever, is discouraged, but is harder to enforce because our guests are often working against us.
The dog should never do this to a stranger, or even to a friend without being invited to.
All of my dogs learned very quickly that this would not be tolerated. Ditto licking.
I consider it quite rude for people to allow their dogs to do this–and I do have friends who let their little dogs do it, but I don’t like it. It’s a training failure. I’m sure nobody here is surprised that there are many, many training failures among dog owners.
Somebody above said none of their friends would mind if their dogs jumped on them. Well, as far as I can tell, my friends think I don’t mind. I do, and I’ve said so, although mildly, because they’re friends. And they didn’t hear it. I don’t know what it would take for them to hear it, but I don’t think I’m going to stretch the bounds of friendship that far.
When I have friends over who are scared of dogs, I lock the dogs up. When I have friends over who are allergic to cats, I lock the cats up, which is considerably harder to do.