How to Teach a Dog to Ignore People Who Want to Pet Them

Make greeting a thing that happens only with your permission, pay your dog heavily for ignoring approaching people, and get comfortable telling strangers no. Those three together fix this in about two weeks. The third one is the part most people skip, and it is the reason the other two fail, because you cannot train a behavior that gets overridden by every friendly person on the sidewalk.

This applies whether your dog is over friendly and mugging people or nervous and being cornered by them. The training is nearly identical. Only the reason differs.

Learn to say no

You need a sentence you can say without thinking about it. Practice it out loud until it is automatic, because you will have about a second and a half to deliver it while a stranger is already reaching.

• We are in training, thanks. Works for almost everybody and invites no argument.
• He is not friendly with strangers right now. Ends the conversation instantly. Slightly unfair to a friendly dog and extremely effective.
• Please give us some space. For people already too close. Say it loudly enough to be heard the first time.
• For children, speak to the adult. Not the child. Sorry, not today, and then move. Do not negotiate with a seven year old about your dog.

Move as you speak. Step between your dog and the person, or turn and walk. Standing still while explaining gives them time to close the distance, and most people reach while they are talking.

The two week drill

You need a helper for the first week. A neighbor or a friend, someone who will follow instructions rather than improvise.

1. Days one to three, helper at twenty feet, walking past. No eye contact with the dog, no talking. Mark and pay your dog for anything that is not fixating. Ten reps a session, two sessions a day.
2. Days four to six, helper at ten feet. Same rules. If your dog cannot hold it at ten feet, go back to fifteen.
3. Days seven to nine, helper walks past at five feet and says hello to you. Not to the dog. Your dog gets paid continuously while the conversation happens. Keep it to twenty seconds.
4. Days ten to fourteen, helper stops, chats, and reaches toward the dog, then withdraws. Pay your dog for staying in position. This is the hardest step and it is where the actual behavior gets built.

Give him a job rather than a prohibition. A sit at your left side, or a hand target, or four feet on the floor. Ignore is not a behavior a dog can do. Sit next to you while somebody walks past is.

The permission system

Once he can hold neutrality, you can start allowing greetings on your terms, which is what keeps a friendly dog from becoming a frustrated one.

Use a release word specifically for greeting. Say go say hi, and only then can he move toward the person. No word, no greeting, ever.

Ask for a sit before the release. Every time, no exceptions, including with people he knows and including in your own house. Inconsistency here is what produces a dog who tries his luck.

Keep greetings to about ten seconds, then call him back and pay. Long greetings tip friendly dogs into over arousal and that is where the jumping restarts.

Say no more often than yes. Roughly one greeting for every four or five people you pass. If most encounters end in a greeting, the sit is just a speed bump on the way to the thing he actually wants.

If your dog is the nervous kind

The drill is the same and the permission system mostly is not. Do not release a worried dog to greet strangers, and do not let people give him treats to win him over.

Treats from strangers are a common piece of bad advice. They pull a conflicted dog into a space he did not want to enter, and the bite risk sits right at the moment the food runs out. Let strangers ignore him completely and let him choose to investigate on his own if he wants to.

Watch for the polite freeze. A dog who goes still and tolerates petting is not enjoying it. Lip licking, head turned away, whale eye, and a closed mouth all mean end the interaction.

What working looks like

By the end of week two you should be able to stop and have a thirty second conversation on the sidewalk with your dog sitting or standing at your side, occasionally glancing up at you, not orienting toward the other person. That is the finished product and it is a realistic target for most dogs.

Expect a setback the first time somebody pets him without asking, because it will happen. One episode does not undo the training. Three or four in a week will, which is why the script matters as much as the drill.

This work overlaps heavily with jumping, since both are about what happens when a person approaches. My free stop the jumping blueprint covers the greeting protocol in full. Download the Stop the Jumping blueprint

Ready to train your dog?

Every drill in this article comes from the WorldWide K9 Academy course library. If you want the full step by step system, start with the $5 intro course.