How to Teach a Dog to Calm Down

We all know what it's like to interact with an excited dog - the dog jumping, biting, pushing into your space, as you are completely overwhelmed by their bombastic energy.

How do we start to get the dog to calm down?

The first order of business is to change how we are moving. Often, when people are stressed, they very clearly signal that stress by quick, jerky, prey like movements. This, coupled with a novice handler's attempts to correct the dog but remain kind, mean that we are moving exactly like a dog who wants to play rough, or vulnerable play - we're jostling the dog hard enough to be interesting but gently enough that there is no real aversive input from the human.

This is a recipe for disaster.

Each time you interact roughly while trying to remain kind, your contact with the dog is just perfect for escalating their jumping, mouthing, and biting. You are the perfect toy.

Instead, the human end of this equation must slow down.

Being completely still is even better - in dog body language, stillness is a warning of a firm correction to come. If you aren't certain of how to deliver an effective correction, then being still removes your preylike qualities from the equation. Keep your hands tucked under your armpits. Don't vocalize. After a few attempts to turn you - the toy - back "on" the dog will give up and return to whatever it was doing before you interrupted them.

Often, when I am greeting dogs I ignore them completely, remain supple and ready but very calm in my own body, and they return the favor by not trying to turn me into an object of amusement.

Particularly boisterous and persistent dogs who have learned that offended humans are very enjoyable playthings might require a fair correction for that behavior - usually by a hands-free hefty and vigorous step right into them, causing them to yield space. This is both bossy and neutral, and the act of yielding space puts them in a more polite frame of mind.