# Toooooo excited to meet new people...



## H15A5H1 (Dec 14, 2009)

my 19 month old male is great with people. he loves meeting people. the problem is he loves it too much! dont get me wrong, i want him to enjoy meeting people but he cant seem to control his excitement. and we dont want to make greeting people a negative experience either. as soon as he even thinks someone wants to meet him, he will be overwhelmed with excitement. 

example: we are in a pet store, sitting at a cafe, or even just walking down the street. if he catches someone just looking at him (they obviously dont want to meet him, but they just stare), he will start to wag his tail like crazy and move forward towards them. not calmly either. he will even charge them if it wasnt for the leash. this scares many people. they had zero intention to meet the dog, and suddenly heres this large dog charging them. or sometimes at a cafe, someone might be walking by and he will try to get up and greet them. this catches many people off guard and scares them. most of the time theyre only staring at him to make sure they can avoid him. when he manages to meet some of them he will even become soo excited and start mouthing. his mouthing has disappeared with us, but strangers he cant seem to resist. many people think this is biting. so obviously this needs much fixing...

he also has problems meeting people at the house. TOO MUCH EXCITEMENT for him. we always put him in a sit and stay when meeting people. he has a hard time with this cause he wants to meet the guest sooooooo bad. and many times many of our guests dont understand the concept of dog training and are not willing to help work with us to fix his rude behaviors. he will even jump on people...we managed to get the jumping under control. we basically rolled him on his back for jumping on grandpa. hes been much more reluctant to jump on anyone now. 

how on earth do you tone down his excitement level? how do we get it through his head that just because someones looking at him, does not mean they want to be his best friend?


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## Ucdcrush (Mar 22, 2004)

My dog Tuki is very similar to that. Sometimes she ignores people, other times she becomes REALLY interested in them and does the whole body wag thing. I expect that it will go away on its own, it has always gone away with other dogs I've had, as they age they seem to be indifferent to people.

For now, I am just focusing on preventing overly obnoxious behavior (the jumping phase is done with) and asking her to restrain herself (sit/stay etc.) before getting the reward of going to see a person. I do not want to correct her just for looking, since I do not want to give a negative association with people. So I just let it be while making sure to correct anything that's over the top, and even over the past few months, she is becoming more indifferent and more calm. It just takes time.


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