Hey all,

Just wondering if anyone has any tips for introducing pups to new people. Hunter is fine and will go over and say hello and then lose interest and go elsewhere. Milla on the otherhand get's so excited and will jump up at them, lick them to death if they try and pat her and put her paws on them (claws hurt!) and will cry like anything. After she's said her version of hello she will go away as well. Any ideas for keeping her calm and stopping the jumping/pawing? We've been working on it at dog school but she doesn't get them same excitement levels as she does with random encounters or when people come into the back yard.

TIA

Have you considered teaching the dogs "sit to greet"?
The idea is to teach your dog that he needs to sit in order to say hello to a stranger.
Basically, walk them on lead, and have people come up and ignore the dog, while you have the dog sit, and then once the dog sits quietly, the stranger may pet the dog and praise it, but if it tries to get up and get excited and jump, you correct the dog, have him sit, and then he can be praised again.

We will give it a try and see if it works, she just gets over excited.

If she is getting too excited, remove her from the stimuli (or distractions). Once she has calmed down, you can try to re-introduce her to the stimuli and try again.

Or, you can practice just walking past people, and rewarding her for ignoring them, and correcting her gently for getting distracted by them.

How often is she encountering new people? It might help to be overly social hosts for a couple weeks, and just have everyone push her off and ignore her for a while, so she gets used to lots of people coming and going, and it isn't so exciting for her.