How to Help Your Dog be Welcoming to Visitors

Dogs love their routines, they enjoy knowing what to expect; like when dinner time comes, your pup will often know when to stand near their bowl and wait despite not being able to tell the time! Routine helps them understand and communicate better with us but sometimes that routine has to be flexible, and this is when some of our pooches can struggle.

Visitors are often unexpected, it’s not like you can prewarn your pup that their afternoon nap will be disturbed by one of your neighbours, even when you know they’re coming over. It can be a frustrating time for owners, especially if you have a dog that isn’t normally prone to barking, but the moment someone shows up at the door, they sound off like a fog horn.

While it may seem like it’s a nuisance to us, barking is a way for your dog to communicate so when someone comes over, they’re often trying to communicate that they’re finding the situation too much and need some help in learning how to deal with it. There are various ways we can help our pups learn to get more comfortable with visits and ultimately stop their barking when someone comes over.

Barking when you have a visitor come to the door is usually over-arousal or anxiety. If you’re excited to have a guest over, you might do things like speak louder and in a higher tone and your pup could simply be feeding off that excitement and joining in with their own barks! They’re just trying to say hello too, which can be a little less desired if they’re barking, bouncing up and smacking your guests with their paws.

Sometimes all you need is to lead by example. If you answer the door calmly then your pup is less likely to get over-excited and will say hello in a calm manner as well!

If your four-legged friend is more likely to be nervous about introductions, the doorway might just be too tight a space for them to feel comfortable greeting someone new. It can give them conflicting feelings to greet someone over the threshold of the front door, so even keeping them in a different room until your guest is settled can help a lot. If they enter the room and your visitor is already sat, talking to them in a calm voice or offering a tasty treat, they’re less likely to react by barking at them.

There are a few different methods you can use to get your excitable pooch greeting visitors more appropriately, so they don’t get put off visiting altogether! Sometimes you will need to use management to make sure a behaviour cannot be repeated so your pup doesn’t learn to greet people by barking and trying to jump on their head.

It’s easy to forget that you can actually use your dog’s lead in the house, not just outside. By keeping your pup on lead, you can manage where they are and not let them bounce in front of you to bombard your guest with licks and nips, instead, you can control them and then manage your visitor by asking them not to fuss your pooch too much and get them overexcited.

If your four-legged friend has a little more self-control, you can always keep a little pot of treats by the front door and if your guests are willing, ask them to request a polite sit from your dog before they say hello to them. If this is repeated every time someone comes to the house, eventually your pup will learn to put their bum on the floor to say hello to people.

If your pooch just can’t contain their excitement long enough to have a full conversation with someone, you can give them a long-lasting chew to encourage calm behaviour around guests simply by distracting them with something tasty.

Even after the initial greeting, you might need to keep physical contact down to a  minimum. Stroking a dog can be very stimulating, if they’re only just managing to keep a lid on their excitement then physical touch can make them boil over and go right back to barking and bouncing up for attention.

Keeping them distracted for a while might be your best bet, like a long-lasting chew or even feeding them from a puzzle toy to get their mind on something else. Toys like the iQuties Wobbler Interactive Dog Toy. can challenge your pup by getting them to turn different levels to find treats. By using a similar style activity toy, your pup will be fishing out their own rewards for their calm behaviour.

Whatever method you use to keep your pup calm when you have visitors, you aren’t going to see overnight success. If your pooch is used to barking or jumping or nipping at visitors, it’s considered a learned behaviour and it takes time to undo this and replace it with something you prefer. It’s all about consistency and continuously preventing them from being able to practice the behaviour you don’t want.

To see results and eventually have a pup that is calm by default when you have visitors, you just need to keep at it and give lots of rewards for the behaviour you want. If you want to get some extra practice in, you can always ask family and friends to help be your guinea pigs and practice visiting while you work on keeping your pooch calm.

Find everything you need so you can have the whole neighbourhood over while your pooch relaxes and keeps all four feet on the ground from our wide range of doggy products.