Dog Calming: How To Make Your Lab Less Excitable

How to calm down a dog – 5 steps

There are five different steps you need to complete in order to calm down a hyper dog.

The first two steps will help you cope with the situation when it arises. The remaining three steps will help prevent your dog having a hyper episode in the future

1. Take control of your dog
2. Calm your dog
3. Change what you do around your dog
4. Provide activities for your dog
5. Teach your dog to relax

Let’s take each of these in turn

#Step 1:Take control of your dog

This is about physically managing your dog to make sure he doesn’t hurt you or anyone else. When your dog is over-excited you’ll need to take steps to control the situation

It is important to be able to control a lively young Lab and you’ll find this easier to do if he is wearing a body harness(paid link)*.

You do not want to have to fight to clip a leash on a 60lb dog while they are nipping at your sleeves or barking in your face, so have your hyper dog wear a training leash outdoors (instructions in that link) and a house line indoors.

Don’t take them off until you put your dog in crate or sleeping area and leave them on their own. Or until they have outgrown this silly phase!

Never use a choke chain or slip lead on a dog that has hyper episodes, your dog doesn’t know their own strength and will hurt their neck or throat.

The next step is to reduce the dog’s arousal or excitement levels. Let’s find out what is calming for dogs

#Step 2: Calming your dog

Outdoors, the best thing to do is to stop whatever you were doing with the dog when he got carried away and start briskly leash walking the dog up and down. Don’t hesitate, don’t try to engage a leaping, nipping dog in conversation – don’t worry about bystanders or being polite to passing strangers. This is an emergency.

Just pick up the leash and start walking. Keep walking briskly until the dog begins to relax as he walks along next to you.

If other people, children, or animals were exciting your dog, move away from them.

In future, when your dog is off leash, remember to attach a training lead(paid link)* to the harness so that you can pick up the end and lead your dog quietly away when he is being silly.

Walking briskly but calmly around can help to lower your dog’s arousal level and let you get back in control of the situation.

Indoors you can use time out. Stop all play and step out of the room. Or place the dog in a crate or room by themselves to calm down for a few minutes. Give yourself a chance to calm down too, before bringing the dog back out again.

Now don’t wait for another ‘hyper’ event, start putting the following steps into action to change the way you interact with your dog.

#Step 3 – Preventing future episodes

Very often the owners of the dog are unwittingly causing the excitability, or at least contributing towards it by their own behavior. It is not difficult to ‘wind up’  a young dog.

This is not your fault, it’s just that humans and dogs play differently and interpret one another’s behavior differently. It’s a kind of language barrier if you like.

Add a very bouncy, friendly, young dog that everyone wants to play with to the mix and it’s easy to lose your way. Fortunately, you can soon put all this right.

Be low key

Lots of over excited greetings,  squeaky voices,  rewarding behavior when the dog leaps around, and a failure to reward when the dog puts his feet on the floor or stands quietly are a common cause of over-excitement in young dogs

To reverse this, you need to reverse your previous behavior Try to pretend to be underwhelmed by your dog. Talk to him quietly and calmly, and persuade other family members to do the same

Avoid physical play

Another common mistake that new puppy parents make, is getting involved in a lot of physical play with a large young dog.

Inexperienced owners and teenage children will often rough-house with a dog, pushing and pulling him, even rolling on the ground with him. This is something you will need to avoid completely in future. No more ‘physical play’.

Have a look at this article – how to play safely with your dog – for ideas for better ways to engage with your growing puppy

Reward the calm!

Your dog will be calm sometimes. Don’t ignore those times.

My husband took one of our dogs to the vet one time for a booster recently. In the waiting room was an elderly couple with a golden retriever. When they arrived,  the young dog lay down quietly and the owners ignored it completely, chatting to one another.

After a few minutes the dog whined and both owners turned to the dog and made a fuss of it.

They then started chatting again,  ignoring the now quiet dog.  Within a minute or two the whining began again.   And each time the dog whined,  the owners again paid it a shed load of attention,  and each time it laid quiet they ignored it.

Needless to say, within twenty minutes, the dog was whining almost constantly and starting to become agitated,  panting and pawing at the couple.  On and on they went,  encouraging and rewarding his attention seeking behavior.

They were no doubt convinced that the dog was upset because he was at the vets, when in fact he had been perfectly happy when he arrived.

Rewarding and reinforcing good, calm, behavior is really important.

#Step 4 Provide activities for your dog

Young dogs need exercise, mental stimulation and attention  But it needs to be the right sort of exercise and the right sort of attention.  Ignoring bad behavior, jumping, nipping and so on is important.  But it is not the end of the story.

Your young dog needs an alternative way of engaging with his family.

Labs are active, intelligent, sociable dogs and they need to be engaged in activities with a human companion every day for some time each day. The way to achieve this is through exercise, training and brain games.

Indoors, you can use puzzle toys* (paid link)and indoor games to entertain your dog in a calm and controlled way. Outdoors you can focus on training your dog to do what he was born to do – fetch stuff for you.

Buy yourself a couple of retrieving dummies(paid link)* and learn how to use them. Try to increase your dog’s daily exercise and to spend some of that time engaging with him in training exercises.

This will help your dog learn to focus on you and to enjoy the rewards that training brings.

Once you have got your Lab fetching simple retrieves, you can make these more complicated so that he has to work both his brain and his body to complete them.

Once his body and brain are tired, and you have put a stop to all rough play, you’ll find your dog’s behavior improving. But there is one more thing you can do to help.

#Step 5 – teach your dog to relax

This is the final step in the process and the icing on the cake. Dogs can be taught and encouraged to relax at home, and even in public places. You’ll find this a useful skill to teach your dog.

It’s a whole topic of its own. So do check out our Teach Your Dog To Relax article

What can I give my dog to calm down?

Some of you may have heard that there is a product called DAP which can help calm a dog. Or you may be wondering if there is some kind of drug that might reduce your dog’s hyper behavior

DAP is short for dog appeasement pheromone.  Even if it were desirable to reduce excitability with some kind of drug,  this is not the role of DAP.   The dap diffuser is intended to reduce stress or anxiety not excitement.

It may have an important role to play in dogs that are frightened of fireworks for example. But it isn’t going to make your bouncy dog any less bouncy.

It’s a good idea to have a chat with your vet if you are worried about your dog’s behavior. Especially if changes in behavior have been sudden, or if your dog seems to be showing signs of aggression.

Your vet may want to refer you to a behaviorist to help you with your dog. But he or she is not likely to want to prescribe any kind of drug to alter your dog’s activity levels. Even if that were possible.

The way out of your predicament with an excitable young Lab is to follow the steps outlined above. Here’s a quick summary of all the points we have covered

Slow and Steady

A young Lab who has frequent hyper episodes doesn’t understand how to interact constructively with people, and doesn’t understand what is acceptable behavior and what isn’t. He is very unsure where his boundaries lie, and quite apart from the misery it causes you, this isn’t a happy state for a dog to be in.

Your first step is to make sure you have the means to manage your dog safely during a hyper episode.

Make sure your dog is wearing a harness and line so that you can control him, and remain very calm yourself. Stop all rough play and walk the dog around until he calms down.

Once calm is restored you need to take steps to avoid overexciting your dog in future

If you are expecting visitors that you know enjoy deliberately winding up your  dog, it might be simpler to put him out of the way until they have gone. Show willing visitors how to reward the dog with a treat only when all four paws are on the ground or when he is sitting quietly in his bed.

Most are only too happy to join in the ‘training game’. Carry a clicker and treats around with you and treat the dog for calm behaviors whenever and wherever you can.

Remember that dogs do what works for them.

If your dog wants attention and you give it to him when he whines, barks, or jumps at you, he will whine, bark, and jump a whole lot more. If you play rough, he will play rough back. And he will not be able to control just how rough the game gets.

Take comfort in the fact that dogs learn fast, and most young dogs grow out of this phase very quickly if people around them are consistent and reward the right behaviors. You might also find it helpful to join our forum where you can chat to the many other dog owners who have been through what you are experiencing, and come out the other side in one piece!

More information on Labradors

Check out our Labrador Training section for more help and advice on managing a lively Labrador.

If you’d like all of our best Labrador information together in one place, then check out The Labrador Handbook.

The Labrador Handbook is available(paid link) worldwide, and looks at all aspects owning a Labrador, through daily care, to health and training at each stage of their life.