Sorry, He Is Friendly: Fixing the Doodle Front Door Greeting

It starts with a sound. The doorbell, a handle turning, the particular crunch of one specific car on the driveway. Somewhere in the house a doodle converts that information instantly into motion, and by the time the door is open there are sixty pounds of curly enthusiasm airborne in the hallway while you say the sentence every doodle owner has said too many times: sorry, he is friendly.

He is, and that is the whole problem. The jumping is not aggression and it is not a dog trying to run the household. It is affection with no brakes on it, and it is harder to undo than people expect, because the dog is being paid by the exact thing you do to stop it.

Why doodles jump more than most

Look at the recipe. Golden Retrievers, Labradors, Bernese Mountain Dogs and Poodles are all breeds built to work close to a person and to check in constantly, so the doodle default is a dog who wants to know where you are and whether they could be nearer. A greeting is the highest point of their day, they want their face near your face, and a standard doodle is tall enough to try.

Then add the puppy discount. A ten pound doodle with their paws on your shins is adorable, and every visitor for the first two months teaches that puppy it works. Nobody decides to train jumping. It gets trained by accident, by everyone who bent down and cooed, and then the puppy grows into sixty pounds of the behaviour we all rehearsed.

Some dogs greet you before they have finished arriving, which is the entire idea behind the T'sup Dood tee.

The thing that makes it worse is the thing everyone does

Kneeing, pushing them down, shouting the name, grabbing the front paws. All of it is attention, delivered at the precise moment the paws leave the floor. To a dog who jumped because they wanted contact, contact is contact, and the annoyed version still counts. That is why your doodle targets the guest who reacts the most and ignores the one who stood there like furniture.

The rule that fixes it is boring and absolute. Four paws on the floor gets everything, jumping gets nothing: no eye contact, no hands, no name, no telling off. Turn a shoulder, look at the ceiling, and wait. The first few attempts get briefly worse, because a behaviour that used to pay is tested harder before it is abandoned. The moment the front feet land is when the greeting starts, and that greeting should be enormous.

Set the door up so the dog can win

• Practise when nobody is there. Ring your own bell and open the door onto an empty step. Twenty repetitions of nothing happening turn the doorbell from a starting pistol back into a sound.
• Give them a job with an address. A mat a few steps back from the door is easier to learn than "do not jump", because it says what to do instead of only what to stop.
• Keep a leash on the door handle. Clipping it on before you open up is management, not failure. A dog who cannot rehearse the jump is quietly getting better at not jumping.
• Get low early. Crouching before the launch gives an affectionate dog the face they were aiming for, without the takeoff.
• Walk them before the guests arrive. A doodle who has been out is delighted to see your sister. A doodle who has been indoors since breakfast is delighted and fizzing.

It is not only a doodle thing

The original offenders are still out there, which is why the Derpy Golden Retriever tee hangs in the shop right beside the doodles.

Every household with a Golden Retriever, a Labrador or a Boxer knows this scene from the inside. The wiring is the same and so is the fix.

Consistency is usually the real obstacle. If one person lets the dog jump up for a cuddle on the sofa while another holds the line at the door, the dog is not confused. The dog is gambling, and intermittent payouts build the most stubborn habits there are.

What to say to the person at the door

"He is friendly" is an explanation, and what your guest needs is an instruction: ignore him until he sits, then make as much fuss as you like. Most people are glad to help once they are told how.

The other half is remembering that some visitors do not want a greeting at all. A small child at eye level with a big happy dog, an older relative who is unsteady on their feet, someone who is simply frightened of dogs. A leash clipped on for ninety seconds costs you nothing.

Keep the wiggle, lose the launch

None of this makes a doodle less delighted to see people. The wiggle, the happy noises, the trophy delivered from wherever they could reach: that is the best part of living with one of these dogs, and it survives training. You are only moving the party down to floor level.

And on the day your dog holds the sit while a stranger walks in, you will want to tell someone. Our shop is organized by breed, so you can find your exact doodle, or your exact not-a-doodle, and wear the one who is currently vibrating by the front door.