Impulse Control / Overexcitement

If you clicked on this service we offer, there’s a good chance your dog doesn’t have a problem getting excited. Almost every dog gets excited for one reason or another. The problem is what happens when that excitement takes over.

Maybe the doorbell rings and they lose their mind. A guest walks in and they’re jumping, barking, spinning, or grabbing whatever toy they can find. Maybe they see another dog and suddenly you don’t exist. Perhaps you pick up the leash and they’re bouncing off the walls before you even get near the front door.

Or it could be one of a thousand other things your dog does when they get overly excited. Every dog is different, and so is what that excitement looks like.

It’s also very possible that they know Sit or Down, or know exactly what you want them to do sometimes. But other times, they can’t seem to do those same things when they’re overly excited—which is often when it matters the most.

All of these behaviors, and many more, fall under one umbrella:

Impulse control.

Excitement Isn’t the Problem

We don’t want to take the excitement out of your dog. Nobody wants that.

A dog who gets excited about food, toys, walks, people, play, or training can be a lot of fun to live and work with. That excitement can even be incredibly useful when we’re training them.

The problem isn’t that your dog gets excited. The problem is when that excitement takes over and they lose the ability to think, listen, or control what they do next.

The goal isn’t to take the excitement out of your dog. It’s to give your dog a brake pedal—the ability to still do what you’re asking them to do, even when they’re excited.

What Is Impulse Control?

Impulse control is your dog’s ability to resist an immediate urge and make a different choice.

The stronger the desire to do something, the more impulse control it takes not to do it.

We’re sure you’d agree that it’s easier for your dog to Sit when nothing is happening. It’s much harder to Sit when the front door opens and Auntie Nicole, who always brings a brand-new toy, is standing on the other side.

It’s also a lot easier to leave a few pieces of kibble than a steak they just watched you cook.

That’s why dogs can appear extremely obedient in one situation and not so much in another. You may think your dog knows exactly what you’re asking them to do—and you may be right.

What they haven’t necessarily learned yet is how to do those same things when what you’re asking them to do is competing with whatever is making them so excited.

“My Dog Just Has So Much Energy”

Sometimes they do.

Very often, that’s extremely helpful when training dogs. It’s a lot easier to install a brake pedal on a dog than it is to take a dog with very little or no drive or excitement and install a gas pedal.

Exercise matters, and some dogs absolutely need more physical and mental activity than others.

But no amount of exercise can replace impulse control.

You can run a high-energy dog for miles and still have a dog who loses their mind when someone knocks on the door. In fact, if the only things we ever teach an energetic dog are to go faster, chase longer, play harder, and stay stimulated, we may end up building an incredibly fit dog who still doesn’t know how to settle for any meaningful length of time.

Dogs need opportunities to run, play, sniff, explore, and just be dogs.

But they also need to learn how to turn it off.

Very often, clients come to us feeling like their dog has reached the point of no return. They’re simply too excited, and there’s no way they’re ever going to be able to hear them, pay attention, or make good decisions once that excitement takes over.

That’s almost never the case.

Impulse control is a skill. It can take some time to develop, especially in a dog who has spent a long time practicing the opposite, but it is absolutely teachable.

And with the right training and consistency, we can often see major transformations much faster than owners thought possible.

Your Dog Is Learning From What Happens Next

Dogs are constantly learning from what they do and what happens next.

Without getting too deep into the weeds of nerdy dog-training terminology, in its simplest form, dogs are very aware of what they do—and they’re also very aware of what happens afterward.

That’s why positive reinforcement works so well. It’s also why corrections work. Dogs learn that a behavior has an outcome, and that outcome helps determine whether they’re more or less likely to do that behavior again in the future.

If you’d like to dive a little deeper into how and why this works, check out our [Operant Conditioning] page.

And that brings us back to overexcitement.

One of the reasons so many dogs struggle with it is actually pretty simple:

Very often, being overly excited works.

Your dog jumps because they want attention. There’s a pretty good chance that you—or someone else—pets them. At the very least, they get attention. Whether you consider it good attention or bad attention may not matter very much to a dog who was simply looking for attention in the first place.

Maybe they’re super excited at the door because they desperately want to see who’s there. If that door opens without them ever having to calm down, that alone should help explain why your dog continues to get so excited whenever somebody’s at the door.

Maybe they pull toward another dog because they desperately want to say hello. They may not get to meet every dog, but sometimes they do.

Perhaps they lose their mind while you’re preparing their food. And before they can say, “Hey, give me that food!” their face is already in the bowl.

In every one of these examples, from your dog’s point of view, there’s a pretty clear pattern:

They did something. Something happened afterward. And very often, they got exactly what they wanted.

So why not give it a shot again?

That doesn’t mean you intentionally taught your dog to behave this way. We’re pretty confident that wasn’t your intention. But if getting overly excited repeatedly ends with your dog getting what they wanted anyway, they have little to no reason to stop doing whatever helped get them there.

Think about it from their perspective. If something you did kept getting you what you wanted, would you stop doing it?

Probably not.

So why should your dog?

Learning to Think While Excited

We don’t only want a dog who can behave when they’re calm.

We want a dog who can still think, listen, and make good choices when they’re excited.

That ability doesn’t magically appear because your dog gets older, and it doesn’t automatically come with knowing Sit, Down, Place, or any other command. It has to be taught, practiced, and eventually generalized to the situations where you actually need it.

How we do that will depend on your dog, what gets them excited, and what that excitement looks like. We may use obedience, boundaries, waiting, duration work, engagement, or structured access to the things they want. But the specific exercises aren’t really the point.

We’re teaching your dog a much bigger lesson:

Wanting something doesn’t mean you immediately get to have it. And when it is available to you, getting it may require making the right choices first.

Frustration Is Part of the Picture

For some dogs, being told “not yet” can be incredibly difficult.

They want the toy. They want the food. They want to greet the person. They want to get out of the car.

And when they can’t immediately have what they want, excitement can quickly turn into frustration.

That frustration may look like barking, whining, pulling, jumping, grabbing the leash, mouthing, or completely falling apart. Every dog can show it differently.

We’re not trying to frustrate your dog simply for the sake of frustrating them. However, frustration is a part of the learning process, and a well-rounded dog needs to learn how to think through that emotion too.

There will be times throughout your dog’s life when they become frustrated for reasons you can’t control.

Teaching them how to work through manageable frustration instead of falling apart gives them a skill they can use for the rest of their life.

And every time your dog successfully works through something difficult, they’re learning something else:

I can handle this.

That’s not only impulse control. It’s also another opportunity to build their self-confidence.

Calmness Is a Skill Too

People spend a lot of time teaching their dogs how to do things.

Sit. Down. Come. Heel. Fetch. Tug. Chase. Jump.

Sometimes we forget that learning how to “do nothing” is a skill too.

For a dog who struggles with overexcitement or lacks impulse control, “doing nothing” might be at the top of the list. Learning how to settle or be calm can be just as valuable as learning five commands and two tricks.

Your dog doesn’t need to be sleeping or completely uninterested in what’s happening around them. Being calm can simply mean being able to watch what’s going on without feeling the need to participate in everything.

The more time your dog spends calmly experiencing things in their environment, the more neutral those things can become. Instead of everything being a reason to get excited and involved, they can learn that sometimes things are simply happening around them—and they don’t need to do anything about it.

And just like Sit, Down, or Come, the ability to settle doesn’t have to be something your dog was born knowing.

It can definitely be taught.

Consistency Matters

Impulse control becomes very confusing when the rules constantly change.

If jumping works sometimes, pulling gets them where they want to go sometimes, barking gets attention sometimes, or breaking a command is ignored sometimes, your dog has a pretty good reason to keep trying those behaviors.

Dogs don’t understand, “I don’t mind today.”

They understand patterns.

We’ll teach your dog what the expectations are and show you how to reinforce those expectations in everyday life. But what happens between our sessions matters just as much.

We can teach your dog impulse control. How well it sticks—and how long it lasts—will depend largely on how consistent those expectations remain when we’re not there.

The clearer and more predictable you are, the easier it becomes for your dog to understand what works, what doesn’t, and what they’re expected to do instead.

The Goal Isn’t a Boring Dog

A dog with good impulse control can still run full speed.

They can wrestle, chase a ball, play tug, get excited when you come home, and enjoy everything they love.

We’re not trying to remove your dog’s personality, enthusiasm, excitement, or drive. Those are often some of the things we love most about them.

We’re teaching your dog that excitement and self-control can exist at the same time.

They can have a gas pedal.

They can use it.

We just want to make sure they have a brake pedal too.

Because the goal isn’t a dog who never gets excited.

It’s a dog who can get excited without losing their ability to hear you, think, and make good decisions.