Understanding Dog

Over thousands of years dogs have refined their communication and survival skills without the help of humans. Without our interference they are able to survive in the wild and continue on with the species. So when exactly did we decide we knew better than a dog as to how it should behave?

Probably the biggest issue people have with their dogs is jumping on people. Humans think of jumping as a bad behavior and spend hours and hours trying to stop the "bad" behavior. But how many of these owners have given much thought a to why a dog jumps? I am just as bad as anyone else. Dog jumps on me and I tell them off or no jump as they approach a person. Like everyone else I try to "fix" what I perceive as a bad behavior, but let's look at it from the dogs point of view. Early on while still in the whelping box puppies learn to approach their mother and siblings by jumping up and licking their mouth a form of greeting and submission at the same time. Have you ever noticed when your dog meets another dog one of the first things they do is to jump on the other dog. Dog is saying well hello my name is Finn. The same goes for a person, the dog jumps up to greet and the person pushes them off. So the dog thinks wow I didn't get my point across so let me jump even bigger, higher and harder.
It is almost impossible to train a dog not to do something like jumping up to greet but it is possible to train a different response like "sit" for a greeting. Trying to think like a dog is probably the hardest part of dog training.