The 3 Reasons Why Dogs Jump

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Why does your dog jump? Before you can do anything about it, you need to know why it happens

Every behavior has a function with dogs. In the case of jumping, let’s look at what those functions might be so you can look at your own dog and breakdown which one(s) are most likely at play. 
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Function #1: For attention
Function #2: It feels good - It provides a Dopamine boost
Function #3: To access to a resource

In social animals, our attention plays an enormous role in our dog's behavior. They are often either trying to get closer to or further away from us. They are trying to increase or decrease distance. Attention seeking behaviors are distance-decreasing, by nature.

There was a study done in 2012 (Dorey & al., 20128(11) that showed that dogs significantly decreased their jumping when access to what they wanted was not available for at least 20 seconds after jumping.

Function #1: Attention Seeking

With attention-seeking dogs, they learn to jump when they realize that our eyes, face and hands (the things that give them the attention they want) are up above them. This starts at a young age when they tend to get reinforced for it more often because they’re little, and cute, and relatively harmless. Then they grow, and grow, and grow. Pretty soon, they’re still cute but a little less harmless when they jump! But while we changed the rules, we didn’t make that clear to them. We continue to reinforce the jumping, usually unconsciously.

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